informative speech on yellowstone national park

gretchen stennett

Lincoln lutheran senior, informative speech: usa national parks.

These are my notes for my informative speech that I presented over the National Parks in the United States.

Introduction

Hi, I am Gretchen Stennett and I’m a sophomore here at LL. Have you ever wanted to visit Tatooine from Star Wars? Well you easily can. The scenes in the Star Wars movies that took place on the planet of Tatooine were filmed in Death Valley National Park in California. What about Indiana Jones? Some scenes from the Last Crusade were filmed in Arches NP in Utah. (change) National Parks were once created to preserve the natural beauty and the history of this nation. Without the NPs, our country, our culture, our education, and many other things would be to totally different. Today, I will be sharing 3 topics about the National Parks that describe how our nation has changed and been impacted by their existence.

• (2) The National Parks Services website states “The National Park Service preserves … the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations…to extend the benefits of natural and cultural resource conservation and outdoor recreation throughout this country and the world.”
• In this video, You will see a picture from every park and will be able to see our diverse land and see why the NPS has decided to preserve this land as a national park. This video shows all 59 NPs in 60 seconds.
• You can see in this video all the different landscapes that are preserved in the NPs.
• Highest point of the USA (Mt. Denali)
• Lowest point of the USA (Death Valley)
• Largest volcano in the world (Mauna Loa)
• Largest living tree in the world (General Sherman Tree)

There are many things to be seen at the National Parks but to understand how and why the parks exist, it is important to know the history.

History (2) – summary

• The National Parks Service Website provides a lot of information about their history.
• First NP in 1872: Yellowstone in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho (President Ulysses S. Grant)
• President Woodrow Wilson created NPS in 1916
• Artists, philosophers, political leaders
• And they helped us identify as a nation and individuals of USA
• NPS continues to conserve our natural and historical sites in the National Parks to make them easily accessible by all Americans.
• According to the NPS, over 13 trillion people had visited the National Parks in 2015. This map shows the difference in attendance in the NPs in 2014 by the size of the dots.
• National parks were created as an expression of faith in the future. Generations have agreed to preserve the natural beauty and pass it on to the future generations.
• NPS is an educational service meant to teach our people of the beauty of our land. Through NPs we are able to demonstrate principles of biology, show our history, engage everyone and everything, and challenge ourselves in the process
• National Parks continue to do all these things today

History can be educational and enjoyable and the NPS tries to convey that in the National Parks in many different ways. But to conserve our history, we must also conserve the natural beauty. The natural beauty of this nation is amazing and we want to be able to share that with others. The NPS also hopes to conserve the life inside the parks for future generations to see.

Conservation of Life

• Many problems have approached the National Parks and how they can conserve life
• One example is endangered animals
• According to National Parks Conservation Association: There are about 1400 endangered species in our nation
• The sad fact is that many of these species are extinct and would not exist today if not for the NPS
• Most wolves were gone due to ranchers protecting their livestock
• Yellowstone started to reintroduce wolves into their park (one of few safe havens for wolves in USA)
• Number of wolves continues to rise
• Any parks, Any time, Any season, Any place, Water, land, or air
• Every season is different based on different species’ lives (mating, migration, hibernation, food, raising young, etc)
• NPs are a unique situation to see a variety of wildlife but all visitors have to be safe and careful

Conservation is very important and the NPS does everything it can to preserve what needs to be preserved. But sometimes what needs to be saved, either isn’t safe for humans or humans aren’t safe for it. When visitors aren’t aware of their own safety they can influence the parks in ways that can never be erased. The NPS tries to avoid these problems with signs, videos, rangers, brochures and many other tactics.

Safety (5 & 6)

• High elevations, dangerous activities, climate, hazards, poisonous plants and animals, natural disasters (volcano eruptions, avalanche, rock slide, etc)
• They ignore the signs
• Push the limits
• Don’t use common sense
• Heat, cold, and animal deaths are among the lowest causes of death per year
• Highest cause of death is drowning and car accidents
• With millions of visitors piling in and out of parks every year, the ecosystem is immensely impacted
• When i lived in Utah, my family would often visit the 5 national parks in southern Utah. Our favorite was Arches National Park
• Every time we went there, the rangers always said the same thing, “stay on the trails. If you go off the trail you will hurt the soil.”
• In the southwest, there is a certain type of soil that was especially in Arches. This is called Crypto biotic soil. the cyanobacteria in the soil creates a web of fibers that connects all the tiny particles of soil together and helps avoid erosion from wind or water.
• The problem about this soil is that is very fragile. When the soil is repeatedly stepped on, driven on, or biked on, the soil begins to loosen and then is able to erode and therefore destroy the land.
• Most visitors understand that they are responsible. But because of different perceptions of risk, the high-risk activities, and not having a friend there with them, or if they have a companion with them, both of them make the wrong decisions and don’t hold each other accountable, it is easy for people to make the wrong choice.
• All visitors just have to pay attention to their surroundings and make smart choices.

The National Parks were created to preserve this nation’s natural beauty and to educate our people. The national parks are home to many things that you cannot see anywhere else in the world. Visitors go to the national parks to learn and explore but are reminded to be smart and safe. I encourage you to learn more about our nation through visiting the national parks yourself. National Parks are educational, historical, and fun if you take the time to enjoy them. Thank you.

Works Cited

42 National Parks Threatened by Oil and Gas Drilling . 23 January 2013. Accessed 5

October 2017.

Andrews, Candice Gaukel. Gas and Oil Drilling in Our National Parks . 11 July 2013.

Accessed 5 October 2017.

Errick, Jennifer. Meet 9 Endangered National Park Animals . 16 May 2014. Accessed 3

Franklin, John Hope. Rethinking the National Parks for the 21st Century . July 2001.

• Accessed 29 September 2017.

Ingraham, Christopher. Forget Bears: Here’s What Really Kills People at National Parks .

12 August 2015. Accessed 5 October 2017.

Ley, Dana and Letitia Burns O’Connor. America’s Spectacular National Parks . 2009.

National Parks Service . n.d. Accessed 29 September 2017.

Repanshek, Kurt. Will Expanded Wi-Fi Enhance the National Park Experience? 6 February

Rickard, Laura N., et al. “Exploring Attribution of Responsibility for Visitor Safety in a US

National Park.” Health, Risk & Society , vol. 13, no. 6, Sept. 2011, pp. 527-545.

EBSCO host , doi:10.1080/13698575.2011.613983.

Wolves in Yellowstone National Park . n.d. Accessed 8 October 2017.

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Yellowstone turns 150. Here's a peek into the national park's history

It's safe to say Yellowstone National Park is still looking good at the ripe old age of 150.

The world famous site became the first national park in the U.S. on March 1, 1872, when President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act into law.

The park, which stretches into Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, is known for its unique natural scenery, bountiful wildlife, and deep history. It also helped usher in the broader national park movement in the U.S., according to Chuck Sams, the director of the National Park Service.

The NPS now has 63 parks across the country. Sams said Tuesday's anniversary was a celebration bigger than just Yellowstone.

"We also celebrate something much bigger than the park itself—the beginning of the national park idea, an idea that spread through the country and around the world, inspiring governments to protect natural and cultural treasures 'for the benefit and enjoyment of the people,'" he said in a statement.

Yellowstone's history stretches back thousand of years

In its history before it became a national park, Yellowstone was home for thousands of members of Native American tribes — many of whom walked the same trails visitors do today.

Members of dozens of tribes including the Kiowa, Blackfeet, Cayuse, Coeur d'Alene, Shoshone, and Nez Perce have interacted with Yellowstone for the past 11,000 years, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The Indigenous population was eventually pushed out of Yellowstone entirely. For a time, the park officials promoted Yellowstone as a location previously untouched by humans — including even by Native Americans.

Nature's draw brings millions of visitors each year

Yellowstone's famous Old Faithful geyser is just a part of a vast collection of geothermal features within the park. According to the NPS, there are over 10,000 hydrothermal sites — such as hot springs or geysers — which make up half of the world's collection of active geysers.

Yellowstone is also home to the largest concentration of mammals in the lower 48 states. Bears, wolves, coyotes, moose, and a large population of small animals can be found in the park.

It's also the only place in the U.S. where bison have lived continuously since prehistoric times. It was looking dicey for a period in the 1900s, when the animal was hunted down from a previous high of tens of thousands to less than two dozen. This bison conservation effort continues to this day.

Throughout the park's history, stories of many visitors interfering with the wildlife have made headlines. Recently, a woman received a four day jail sentence for getting too close to grizzly bears.

It's Yellowstone's natural beauty and deep history that brings millions of visitors each year.

Yellowstone shut its gates in March 2020 due to coronavirus concerns and remained closed for nearly two months . But the park broke attendance records after it reopened.

The park reported 4.9 million recreation visits in 2021 — up 28% from 2020 and making it the busiest year on record. July 2021 was the most-visited month in Yellowstone's history and the first time visitation exceeded 1 million visits in a single month.

"Yellowstone's 150th anniversary is an important moment in time for the world," said Yellowstone Superintendent Cam Sholly. "It's an opportunity for us to reflect on the lessons of the past while focusing our efforts to strengthen Yellowstone and our many partnerships for the future."

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Yellowstone at 150

By Johnny Diaz March 24, 2022

• Share full article

Yellowstone National Park turned 150 years old this month.

The park is observing the milestone with events throughout the year that celebrate its history. Here’s a look →

The United States’ first national park was established on March 1, 1872, when President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act to preserve the region’s hydrothermal and geologic features for future generations’ enjoyment.

For over 10,000 years before becoming a national park, Yellowstone was a place where Native Americans lived, hunted, fished, gathered plants and used the area’s naturally hot waters for religious and medicinal purposes, the National Park Service said.

The 2.2-million-acre park, 96 percent of which is in Wyoming, is home to bison, grizzly bears, gray wolves and several species of native fishes .

The park is known for its hydrothermal activity, the function of an active volcano. Water in the hot springs and other hydrothermal features can exceed 400 Fahrenheit .

On May 6, the historic Old Faithful Inn, built of logs and stones in the winter of 1903-4 , will host a free event featuring bus tours of the Old Faithful historic district and an exhibition of Native American art.

To show how visitors have traveled to the park over the past 150 years, Yellowstone will display its historical vehicle collection in August.

The collection includes 30 horse-drawn and motorized vehicles , ranging from stagecoaches to early touring cars, buses and service trucks.

Read more about Yellowstone National Park.

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Yellowstone, the First National Park

Few people know Yellowstone Country and America's national parks better than wildlife biologist Jeremy Schmidt. Join Jeremy as he explores the animals in Yellowstone's backyard and takes us on a journey through the history of the U.S. National Park System.

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As it turns 150, Yellowstone highlights Indigenous connections to the park

Doug MacDonald is like a lot of tourists that visit Yellowstone National Park.

“When I take my family to the park our goal is to see bison and bears and wolves and Old Faithful,” he said.

But, while there's plenty known about the wildlife and natural wonders, MacDonald — an archeologist and author of the book "Before Yellowstone: Native American Archeology in the National Park" — says there’s not yet enough on the park’s human history. Specifically, its Native American history.

Crow tribal member and scholar Shane Doyle agrees.

“What I think we see now in the park when we go there when it comes to Native people is a void," he said. "There’s a blank spot on the map, and so our minds are left to kind of wander and wonder about what was here and who was here and when were they here?"

For most of its history, Yellowstone National Park was presented as untouched by humans. But Native Americans had a presence there for thousands of years before it became the world’s first national park on March 1, 1872.

Today, 27 tribes say their heritage is intertwined with the park. As Yellowstone turns 150, park officials are strengthening partnerships with tribal nations to update the park’s story.

Doyle and MacDonald stress that Native American presence in the park goes back more than 11,000 years.

“They were in there hunting bison and bear and rabbit," MacDonald said. "Fishing a little bit on the rivers as well and collecting things like bitter root and camas during the various seasons of which they’d move in and out of Yellowstone.”

When Yellowstone became a national park in 150 years ago, Native Americans were present in and around the park. Around the time, tensions were high as the U.S. government began forcing them out of the area and onto reservations.

But that wasn't the story told to the American public. MacDonald says the park’s early marketing materials highlighted Yellowstone’s natural beauty to try and attract visitors.

“They needed to make it look safe, and so they often would tell the tale that Native Americans didn’t live there and that was because they were afraid of the hot springs and geysers,” he said.

That myth, of course, has been debunked. Going into its 150th year, the park is acknowledging what it got wrong in the past and updating its story with more Native American voices. This summer, a new Tribal Heritage Center near Old Faithful will open.

“This isn’t just about the last century and a half," Park Superintendent Cam Sholly sad about tribal partnerships at a virtual media event about the park’s 150th. "We also want to use this anniversary to do a better job of fully recognizing many American Indian nations that lived in this area for thousands of years prior to Yellowstone becoming a park."

Sholly said one ongoing way the park is strengthening tribal relations is through bison conservation.

“We have one of the highest numbers of bison in the park since 1872, since Yellowstone was created,” he said. “Remember, 100 years ago there were less than 25 bison in this park, and so the fact that we’re sitting at 5,500 by itself is a good conservation success story.”

Recent upgrades will soon allow the park to transfer around 100 bison per year to tribal nations. In the last couple of years the program has moved around 200 bison to 18 tribal nations around the country.

The National Park Service is also in the process of updating a 20-year-old document that guides management of bison in Yellowstone. The updated plan prioritizes tribal hunting and the bison transfer program. Potential changes could also mean an increase in the park’s bison population

The return of the bison has a deeper meaning for Native Americans, Scott Frazier, a Crow elder, said at the recent Yellowstone anniversary event.

“We are related to the buffalo. We are the same thing," he said. "Their mirror to us is as they grew back in strength in Yellowstone so did we, and we started to heal and we got better and stronger."

The park is also installing a teepee village near Roosevelt Arch, similar to the temporary teepee set up near the park's entrance last summer.

Before that, Crow tribal member Shane Doyle says, "there really hasn’t been a native presence of teepees in the park since the 19th century."

Doyle says the event in August will expand visitor’s knowledge of Native Americans' past and present connections to the park — filling in what he called that blank spot of the park’s human history.

“What did people think about this place and how did they interact with it all those years ago? What can we learn from that? How can that help inform our sensibilities today?” he said.

Doyle and Sholly hope that the teepee village and other features like it will encourage more dialogue and collaboration between the tribes and park officials.

Doyle says looking back to the past will help chart the path forward.

“It’s going to be a healing experience for everyone involved," he said, "and it’s going to pave the way for future generations to have more of an authentic and joyful experience in Yellowstone (National) Park."

Episode 27: Harnessing the power of Yellowstone’s supervolcano

Yellowstone’s “supervolcano” is capable of causing mass destruction, but its incredible power could also help us fight climate change.

If a major eruption ever were to occur at Yellowstone’s “supervolcano,” the event could destroy huge swaths of North America. But in recent years, some scientists have proposed that the amazing power locked beneath the caldera could be harnessed to generate renewable geothermal energy. National Geographic writer Maya Wei-Haas examines the risks of a supervolcanic eruption at Yellowstone and what it would take to use it as a power source.

Listen on iHeartRadio , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Stitcher , Castbox , Google Podcasts , and Amazon Music .  

THE VIOLENT EARTH (1973 National Geographic television special): The apocalyptic vision of fire bursting from the Earth haunts man with the image of all in nature that is beyond his control.

(Sound of a volcano erupting)

PETER GWIN (HOST): There’s something about volcanoes that makes them the superstars of natural disasters. Magma violently forcing its way to the surface and exploding with terrifying force.

The images of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii and its doomed residents encased in volcanic ash and pumice are grim reminders for what happens when a volcano “wakes up.”

You might be surprised to learn that the United States is actually one of the planet’s most volcanic places. It’s got 161 volcanoes in its 50 states and territories that have been active in the past 12,000 years. That's actually the most in the world.

The U.S. West Coast forms one edge of the famous Ring of Fire, which is a semicircle of volcanic activity that runs along a series of faults at the edge of the Pacific ocean. Roughly 75 percent of the planet’s volcanoes occur in this ring.

The best known volcano in the U.S. is probably Mount St. Helens. I still remember as a kid being freaked out watching its 1980 eruption on the news and the ominous clouds of ash it spewed across huge swaths of North America.

But here’s the thing: America has a massive volcano that is practically hidden in plain sight—right beneath Yellowstone National Park. And it’s not just any volcano, it’s a supervolcano.

MAYA WEI-HAAS (WRITER): Yellowstone has actually had three supereruptions that we know of throughout its history. There was one at 1.3 million years ago, and then it's had two others. One at 640,000 years ago, and then one at 2.1 million years ago—and that was the largest of all of its eruptions that it's had. And these were big events. I mean, they were in the thousands of cubic kilometers of material that was released.

GWIN: That’s Maya Wei-Haas, she’s a science writer at National Geographic and she’s got a Ph.D. in earth science and a deep love for volcanoes.

WEI-HAAS: Mount St. Helens was a devastating event, but the size of that eruption was much, much smaller. Mount St. Helens’s 1980 eruption was estimated at about 0.25 cubic kilometers of material. And so for reference, the smallest of the eruptions from Yellowstone that's considered a supereruption was 280 cubic kilometers.

GWIN: Holy cow. So we're talking an order of magnitude.

WEI-HAAS: Magnitude, yeah. Yeah.

GWIN: If Yellowstone were to blow up now, how big an event, like how far reaching an impact would that have?

WEI-HAAS: Really, one of the biggest concerns globally would be what's sometimes called a volcanic winter. And we've seen this with actually smaller eruptions in human timescales. It's when you generate so much ash that's pumped into the atmosphere it kind of can shield the Earth from sunlight, and you can get a degree or two of cooling, which might not sound like a lot, but that actually can have kind of catastrophic effects, really, when you're talking about agriculture. And so the impacts around the volcano certainly would not be good. But when we're looking at more of a global affair, it's going to be things like food shortages and crop failures that are going to be a problem.

GWIN: We’ve been interested in doing an episode on supervolcanoes for a while, since one of you—our listeners—asked for it in the comments on Apple Podcasts. Yeah, we actually read those!

And then, a few months ago, I saw a news story about a report, written by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology. Its title, “Defending Human Civilization from Supervolcanic Eruptions,” sounded like the blueprint for a blockbuster disaster movie. Coming soon to a theater near you: Rise of the Supervolcano.

But the NASA paper was actually about solutions. It wondered whether we could solve two problems at once by devising a system that taps into the Yellowstone supervolcano’s geothermal energy, which could supply much of the country with mostly carbon-free electricity. Meanwhile, this process would reduce the heat beneath the surface that could lead to an end times-level eruption. Sounds awesome, right?

I’m Peter Gwin, editor at large at National Geographic,   and you’re listening to Overheard, a show where we eavesdrop on the wild conversations we have here at Nat Geo and follow them to the edges of our big, weird, beautiful world.

This week, we explore the so-called Yellowstone supervolcano. Is it really going to destroy us? Or could it save us with a never-ending supply of relatively clean energy?

More after the break.

This summer, adventure is never far away with a free one-month trial to Nat Geo Digital. For starters, there’s full access to our online stories with new stories published everyday, plus every Nat Geo issue ever published in our digital archives! There’s a whole lot more for subscribers, and you can check it all out–for free–at natgeo.com/exploremore .

CONRAD WIRTH (LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT): About 1870 a group of Montana citizens, with a military escort, decided to investigate the Yellowstone country to verify some—what they thought were fibs told by the trappers of water spouting in the air. So they spent 30 days going up the Yellowstone River, around Lake Yellowstone, and back through the geyser country.

GWIN: That’s Conrad Wirth, who was director of the National Park Service, giving a lecture at the National Geographic Society in 1959.

WIRTH: And it was a fabulous country. And as was accustomed in those days, they were trying to figure out how they were going to divide this land out between themselves and file a claim on it, to which they thought there would be considerable fortune. However, they turned that down cold and said, “No, this land is so great it must be set aside for all the people.”

GWIN: The natural sounds you hear were collected at Yellowstone by the National Park Service and the Acoustic Atlas at Montana State University.

Yellowstone, America’s first national park, was established in 1872, on more than 3,400 square miles. It stretches across northwestern Wyoming and parts of Montana and Idaho. It’s famous for its abundant wildlife—bison, wolves, bears.

(Sounds of wildlife at Yellowstone National Park)

But it’s also famous for its unique geological features, especially its spectacular geysers, most notably the one called Old Faithful, which shoots huge jets of scalding water into the air just over once an hour.

(Sound of Old Faithful)

Geysers like this are actually pretty rare. In fact, if you’re standing at the Old Faithful visitor center you’re practically within the sight of half of the active geysers in the entire world.

These thermal features are the by-product of a massive volcano hidden beneath the surface.

GWIN (to Wei-Haas): Although, you know, I've been to Yellowstone. I've seen the geysers. Where's the volcano?

WEI-HAAS: So it's not the kind of volcano that you think of in a lot of textbooks. You see these perfect triangular peaks and those are known as stratovolcanoes. But the Yellowstone itself is actually kind of—they call it a caldera systems.

GWIN: A caldera system is a type of volcano that undergoes such a large eruption that the surface collapses in on itself, leaving a huge crater. And that’s what happened at Yellowstone over 630,000 years ago.

GWIN (to WEI-HAAS): OK. So I've heard this described as a supervolcano, that this is, you know, you have volcanoes. And then I guess the way it works is you have bigger, supervolcanoes. Is that essentially what we're talking about?

WEI-HAAS: Yeah, so supervolcano is kind of a funny term. Most geologists are going to roll their eyes when they hear the term “supervolcano.” And these days it does have a scientific definition. A volcano is considered “super” if it's had at least one explosion that released more than 240 cubic miles of material, which is a little bit more than twice the volume of Lake Erie.

GWIN: OK. That sounds pretty “super.” I mean, you roll your eyes. But like, to me, the common volcano lover is—that's pretty intense.

WEI-HAAS: Well, no. So “super”—the reason for the rolling the eyes, though, is that supervolcano isn't really a technical term. This term came back—I believe it was first used in, like, the early 1900s in a travelogue. And it was really, I mean, it was a descriptive term. It wasn't a scientific definition.

GWIN: But now supervolcano is used by some to refer to the biggest of volcanoes. So, there is a more technical definition. Similar to the Richter scale that measures the strength of earthquakes, there’s a scale called the volcano explosivity index that measures the size of a volcanic eruption based on magnitude and intensity. A “0” on the scale is non-explosive. An “8” is a supereruption.

WEI-HAAS: All a volcano has to do is have an eruption that big once. And then we consider it a supervolcano for here on out, even though perhaps all the other eruptions it's had are tiny—it doesn't matter. So it creates this sort of fear around these features, a kind of mythos that is not necessarily true.

GWIN: Even if a volcano doesn’t get to a level 8 it can still cause major problems.

For example, in 1815 Mount Tambora, located on the island of Sumbawa in present-day Indonesia, erupted at a 7.

WEI-HAAS: And it created this superheated plume of hot ash and gas that went 28 miles into the sky. And then when that collapses, it produces what's known as pyroclastic flows, which are essentially avalanches of searing hot rock and gas that rush down the sides of the volcano. And at the time, in the 1800s when this happened, it killed around 10,000 people they think.

WEI-HAAS: But then the gases in the ash that were in the atmosphere caused kind of darkened skies. It blotted out the sun. They sometimes call this “the year without summer” because it was so sort of dark and cold. And so they had extensive crop failures and starvation, disease. And there are some estimates that suggest that it killed around 82,000 more people in the year after, or years after, that eruption.

GWIN: For context, Mount Tambora was the biggest eruption recorded in modern times, 40 times bigger than the 1980 eruption at Mount St. Helens. But if Yellowstone had a supereruption, it would be 10 ten times bigger than the eruption at Mount Tambora.

GWIN: So what’s the likelihood of that? Well, each of the three Yellowstone supereruptions has occurred about 600,000 to 800,000 years apart, with the last one taking place just over 630,000 years ago. So maybe we’re overdue? Perhaps we do need a method to defend humanity from supereruptions like was suggested in that NASA paper?

MIKE POLAND (GEOPHYSICIST): This is something that we hear an awful lot. Yellowstone is overdue for an eruption, and I don't know where this comes from.

GWIN: That’s Mike Poland, he’s a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey and the scientist in charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. He’s the guy in charge of looking for signs this might happen.

POLAND: There's no such thing as “overdue” in volcanoes. A volcano will erupt when it has a sufficient supply of eruptible magma, a lot of molten material, and pressure to get that magma to the surface. And right now, neither one of those conditions is in play at Yellowstone. There's no schedule or timetable. There may be average recurrence intervals, but that doesn't make anything due or overdue.

GWIN: OK, so maybe Yellowstone isn’t overdue, but it could still erupt at some point soon, right? Well, not necessarily. To understand why you need to know a bit about what causes volcanic eruptions.

POLAND: You could think of magma almost like a soda. Sodas have carbon dioxide dissolved in them, right? That's carbonation. Magma is the same way. It has a lot of gas dissolved in it—mostly water, carbon dioxide, some sulfur gases. What's happening when volcanoes erupt is gases are coming out of solution and driving the magma upward.

(Sound of carbonated beverage opening)

GWIN: So it’s a bit like shaking a soda and then opening it. In addition to these gases, the magma’s viscosity—or its resistance to flow, basically its thickness—also affects its behavior.

POLAND: Gases get trapped in that more viscous stuff. And so generally, the more viscous stuff is more explosive. But at Yellowstone we see both behaviors. We see very explosive eruptions like the one that created the big caldera 631,000 years ago, but also lava flows. The same composition of magma comes out of the ground, but it's sort of lost its gas already. It's lost that big oomph that makes it blow up. And so when it rises to the surface, it makes these very big, very thick lava flows. And in fact, when you're standing at a place like Old Faithful looking all around you at these high plateaus, those are all lava flows around you that are over 100,000 years old for the most part.

GWIN: The source of all this heat is something Mike calls a hot spot, which melts the crustal plate under Yellowstone. But it’s not like there’s a boiling cavern of molten rock down there waiting to explode.

POLAND: Based on seismic imaging studies, that's sort of like taking an MRI of the Earth; we can see that only about 5 to 15 percent of the magma body beneath Yellowstone is molten, so it's mostly solid but still hot, kind of plasticky, mushy. You know, it stretches underneath the entire caldera system, which is tens of miles across, and it is about five, 10 miles thick in terms of its depth extent. It's still a lot of molten rock. It's still an impressive amount. But it's sort of like concrete that's hardening. There's just not as much magma as would be needed to generate one of these massive explosions.

GWIN: Mike says the Yellowstone caldera might never erupt again because the hot spot could move over time, so a natural supereruption doesn’t seem likely. But maybe humans, some rival power of the U.S., let's say, could force it to erupt? There are all kinds of internet rumors claiming that if a nuclear bomb were dropped on Yellowstone that would trigger a supereruption.

POLAND: This is a pretty common question, and no, that would not work. This experiment has been run before in a way.

GWIN: In 1959, a powerful earthquake shook the Yellowstone region.

POLAND: So essentially it was like having a nuclear weapon go off underground right next to the magma chamber. And a magnitude 7.3 earthquake that releases the energy equivalent to a good sized nuclear weapon. And obviously we're still here talking.

GWIN: OK, we’re not facing an imminent Yellowstone armageddon, but what about the idea that this heat source be harvested as energy?

HAROUN TAZIEFF (VOLCANOLOGIST): When man is what is now called civilized he tries to fight against ignorance. Tries to understand.

GWIN: That’s Polish-born, French volcanologist Haroun Tazieff in the 1973 National Geographic TV special, The Violent Earth.  

TAZIEFF: Doing things against what seems to be unvanquishable is also extremely exciting. Both of these very human tendencies are at the base of our try to understand volcanoes.

GWIN: So the Yellowstone supervolcano isn’t an imminent threat to end human civilization, but what about using its heat to generate massive amounts of relatively clean energy? Renewable energy, of course, is all the rage. Is there a way we could harness all that free heat under Yellowstone to reduce our carbon footprint? Seems like a no-brainer?

JEFF TESTER (PROFESSOR OF SUSTAINABLE ENERGY SYSTEMS): Well, I yeah, I guess I would read it somewhat differently, you know, partly because I don't think we need to go to

Yellowstone. The Yellowstone Basin is obviously bigger than the national park itself, but there's a lot of good reasons why we probably don't want to disturb our national parks. That's one thing. But on the other hand, do we really need to have that kind of resource to do the sort of things I'm talking about?

GWIN: That’s Jeff Tester. He’s a professor of sustainable energy systems at Cornell University.

I called him up to better understand this aspect of the NASA paper about harnessing Yellowstone’s geothermal potential.

TESTER: A lot of people have this solution that technology will all of a sudden perform a miracle, and we'll just do this and we'll be done with it. But I don't think that a supervolcano is necessarily the the sort of panacea of what we want right now. I think we need to take what we learn from a place like Yellowstone. What does it tell us about the behavior of the Earth? And can we use it in other ways, in a much more distributed fashion, more accessible to everybody in the country?

GWIN: Jeff has been studying and building geothermal energy systems for nearly five decades. He told me that for years people have been coming up with grand ideas for geothermal power generation, especially as new tools allowed them to drill deeper and deeper to tap into the boundless heat inside the planet.

TESTER: When I was young—a young engineer—I had the privilege of going out to New Mexico to work with some pretty bright scientists at Los Alamos. And they were designing at that time a drill that was melting rock. They were really thinking, you know, kind of in a similar way to the NASA sort of story. You know, we're going to just drill forever, you know, and just create a huge energy source. They never achieved that, but they did do some things that opened up the area of geothermal.

GWIN: Actually, humans were producing geothermal electricity long before that. In fact, they’ve been doing it for more than a century. It’s a pretty simple process—use the underground heat to make steam, which then drives power turbines that generate electricity.

Italian engineers built the first geothermal power plant in Larderello in 1904, and today those plants still provide about 27 percent of the electricity for the region of Tuscany. But today, the U.S. is actually the largest producer of geothermal electricity, with 93 geothermal power plants spread across eight western states. Most are in California.

TESTER: The California site at the Geysers field is one of the biggest geothermal resources in the world with respect to power production, and it's in a naturally high-gradient area.

GWIN: The Geysers field, about 100 miles west of Sacramento, houses the largest complex of geothermal power plants in the world. Together they generate enough electricity to power a city the size of San Francisco. But generating electricity isn’t the only way to use geothermal power. You can also use it for heat in the winter.

TESTER: If you can imagine, let's take a suburban community, OK? And instead of each house being, you know, having its fuel oil or its natural gas delivered, we would replace that system with pipes that would bring hot water to that house. So you've got a pipe going to your house and a pipe coming back that's bringing colder water. It gets heated up in the geothermal plant—the heating plant—and then it comes right back to you again. So it's a closed loop in a closed water system.

GWIN: This is called a district heating system, and the beautiful thing about it is you don’t need very high temperatures. So you don’t have to be near a supervolcano. You can tap into the Earth’s natural furnace from practically anywhere.

Iceland and some areas of Paris have district heating systems powered by geothermal heat. Jeff says that many parts of the U.S. could benefit greatly from wider use of geothermal heating systems, and these could have a major effect on climate change.

TESTER: We need to have a lot of heat for certain parts of the country. I don't know where you're from, but we live in a cold part of upper New York State, and a good portion of what I'll call the northern tier of the United States, from the tip of Maine all the way through the Rockies and even into Montana and Oregon and Washington, have very big regions where it's cold in the winter. And their carbon footprint, if you will, tends to be much more significantly controlled in some sense by heating.

GWIN: Previously, many of these places, especially those east of the Mississippi, wouldn’t have been considered candidates for using geothermal, because the rock beneath them isn’t that hot. But you don’t need super-hot rock.

TESTER: As long as we're close to the boiling point of water or slightly below, that would be 212 degrees Fahrenheit or, you know, somewhere around 180 or 150 even degrees Fahrenheit. That's going to be usable for heating homes, for sure, and buildings.

GWIN: In fact, Cornell University is planning to drill a 10,000-foot exploratory borehole. They hope to eventually heat the campus with geothermal energy.

TESTER: We're hoping that we'll get the temperatures at that depth. And I'm pretty confident we'll get to the temperatures of the range that we've been talking about, you know, close to the boiling point, 80 degrees centigrade or so, plenty hot enough.

GWIN: These advances are promising, especially as our species’ appetite for more energy continues to grow exponentially. And right now, with the war in Ukraine and rising energy prices everywhere, many nations are concerned about energy self-sufficiency. One country that has long been focused on using geothermal to become energy self-sufficient is Iceland.

TESTER: Iceland's on a volcanic island. They don't have any fossil resources, so they had to import everything, you know, oil that they needed for transport, for heating. They imported a lot of coal. And that gave them a big incentive to sort of use the resources they had, which in Iceland's case are geothermal and hydro.

GWIN: 99.9 percent of Iceland’s electricity comes from renewables. More than 25 percent of that is from geothermal and most of the rest from hydropower. Meanwhile, 90 percent of its homes are heated with water from geothermal sources. They also use it in systems to melt the snow from sidewalks and parking lots.

TESTER: So they've managed over a period of roughly, I would say, a half a century—50 years—to kind of transform their whole system over to geothermal heating. You know, on the timescale of climate change, that's kind of the time frames we should be talking about. We can't do this in a couple of years. But if we get started, you know, that sort of transformation I think would be possible.

GWIN: And Iceland is exporting their knowledge.

TESTER: So the Icelandic government some time ago, many years ago, decided that it wanted to help out developing countries by essentially sharing its technology, by training people—to bring them to Iceland and essentially give them a free education, if you will, with respect to geothermal technology.

GWIN: Researchers in Iceland and elsewhere are attempting to take geothermal to the next level, by drilling into some of the planet’s hottest areas.

TESTER: If we're going to make electricity, we've got to get to somewhat higher temperatures to make this thing make economic sense.

GWIN: One way to reach really high temperatures would be to tap directly into the magma. Scientists in Iceland have started testing this idea with the hope of one day harvesting super efficient and abundant energy.

TESTER: The real challenge here is the subsurface science and the geology involved and whether you could make this really work.

GWIN: But as great as geothermal could be, it’s not without its potential drawbacks. Injecting water into the ground can induce earthquakes. Most of these are too small for a human to feel, but people who live near plants have reported the occasional small quake.

They can also alter the nearby geology in ways that aren’t fully understood. So if you built a plant close to Yellowstone, it could have a major unintended impact.

WEI-HAAS: By tapping into the geothermal power directly in the park, there's a risk of losing the geysers and everything that Yellowstone is.

GWIN: In fact, this has happened before—in New Zealand. A geothermal plant was built In the Wairakei Basin in 1958 and the geysers there subsequently disappeared.

OK, so back to the NASA report. I reached out to Brian Wilcox, the lead author on the paper, which originally came out in 2015. Back then, Brian was an engineer at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. And I asked him how a NASA engineer had come to look at supervolcanoes.

BRIAN WILCOX (ENGINEER): I was on a panel looking at planetary defense—defense of Earth from asteroid impacts. You know, asteroid and comet impacts.

GWIN: Yeah, so NASA is keeping track of all the big stuff in space that could hit Earth and cause a similar type of result as a supervolcanic eruption. After all, a massive asteroid strike is what scientists believe ended up killing the dinosaurs. Brian says that NASA has pretty well identified and is tracking all the major asteroids that could pose a threat.

WILCOX: So really that problem is being largely addressed, and I had thought about supervolcanoes as another threat because they do a very similar thing. They put dust high in the atmosphere.

GWIN: And remember dust in the atmosphere, darkening the sky, is what threatens agriculture and the world’s food supply. As Brian looked at the data, he noticed that statistically Earth has experienced more supervolcanic eruptions than major asteroid impacts, so it seemed that if you’re worried about planetary defense, Yellowstone and Earth’s other supervolcanoes ought to be considered. So his team created their report as a way to examine this problem, to reframe the conversation about defending the planet. But at the same time, Brian is quick to point out that he’s an engineer, not a volcanologist.

WILCOX: But I wanted to basically apply engineering skills to the question: Could humans prevent a supervolcano from causing this, you know, this nuclear winter, asteroid winter, volcano winter?

GWIN: Brian says that once the report got out into the media, it tapped into some old fears–specifically concerns about drilling inside Yellowstone National Park—he notes the report never suggested that. And it breathed new life into some old myths that were circulating on the internet, and then it took on a life of its own. Yeah, I think I've heard that story before.

But Brian also points out that people shouldn’t revile volcanoes, and this is something that Maya spoke passionately about as well. Yes, they're powerful, and if you happen to be near one erupting, it can be dangerous, but we need volcanoes.

WEI-HAAS: Volcanoes are really beneficial to society as a whole. I mean, the reason why we have so many people near volcanoes is partly because volcanoes bring up these sorts of ash and rock that produce these, like, nutrient-rich things as they break down and release and create these really fertile soils. And they have these geothermal potential, and so people tend to settle around them.

GWIN: Even if you live far away from volcanoes, you still may benefit from them.

WEI-HAAS: You can get basalt rock, which is a type of rock that comes from volcanoes that they grind up into a fine powder and you can put it in your plants. It's a common gardening additive to add nutrients, and it also holds water.

GWIN: And if you’re one of the billions of people who’ve taken a COVID test, well, guess what—the enzymes used in the PCR tests, they come from studying heat-resistant microbes living in the thermal ponds at, you guessed it, Yellowstone.

So our message today, fellow Earthlings, is fear not the Yellowstone supervolcano. You may visit the national park safe in the knowledge it will not blow up under you. And while you’re there, think of all the benefits of volcanoes, including music?

Some of the music in this episode was created by a geophysicist named Paolo Dell'Aversana, who used seismic data and volcanic sounds to compose it. In fact, you’re listening to it right now.

If you like what you hear and want to support more content like this, please rate and review us in your podcast app and please consider a National Geographic   subscription. That’s the best way to support Overheard. Go to natgeo.com/exploremore to subscribe.

Articles written by Maya Wei-Haas, including one about the creation of the PCR test, can be found at natgeo.com .  

And if you want to learn more about the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, check out their website usgs.gov/observatories/ yvo .  

You can also check out a story about Brian Wilcox’s new project, harvesting energy from ocean kelp farms .

To hear more geomusic, check out geophysicist, data scientist, and musician Paolo Dell’Aversana’s YouTube Channel .

That’s all in the show notes, they’re right there in your podcast app.

This week’s Overheard   episode is produced by Khari Douglas.

Our producers include Ilana Strauss.

Our senior producers are Brian Gutierrez and Jacob Pinter.

Our senior editor is Eli Chen.

Our manager of audio is Carla Wills.

Our executive producer of audio is Davar Ardalan, who edited this episode.

Our fact-checkers are Robin Palmer and Julie Beer.

Our photo editor is Julie Hau.

Ted Woods sound-designed this episode and Hansdale Hsu composed our theme music.

Thanks to the Acoustic Atlas at Montana State University, the National Park Service, and recordists Shan Burson, Peter Comley, Neal Herbert, Jennifer Jerrett, Jeff Rice, and John Treanor for providing the sounds of Yellowstone used in this episode.

And thanks to Apple Podcasts user who goes by the handle “the blob of death” for suggesting we do an episode on supervolcanoes.

This podcast is a production of National Geographic Partners.

Whitney Johnson is the director of visuals and immersive experiences.

Nathan Lump is National Geographic’ s editor in chief. Welcome aboard, Nathan!

And I’m your host, Peter Gwin. Thanks for listening, and see y’all next time.

Check out Maya Wei-Haas’ article about how bacteria discovered in Yellowstone led to the development of PCR test used to detect Covid-19 , and her article about the eruption of Cumbre Vieja on La Palma .

See how the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory is monitoring the region on their website .

Listen to more of Paolo Dell'aversana’s geomusic on his YouTube page .

Also explore:

Find out more about the geothermal facilities mentioned in this episode on their websites:

Cornell University Borehole Observatory

The Geysers   in California  

Krafla Magma Testbed

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Senses of Yellowstone National Park Essay (Speech)

I have several favorite places in the USA, but I believe that Yellowstone National Park is the one that is really worth mentioning. I was attracted by this place because it is known almost to every person in the world, and those who visited it seem to be deeply impressed by all its beauties and mysteries. Several years ago I finally managed to encourage my whole family to go to Yellowstone on holidays. We spent a couple of days exploring its magnificent scenes and then discussed them for more than three weeks. Since that time, I am willing to go back there with my friends to have shared impressions and experiences.

This assay describes Yellowstone National Park with its unspeakable and breathtaking views using my experience and several rhetorical terms, including metaphor, personification, simile, and alliteration. Please, follow me on the way to my favorite place.

Yellowstone National Park is a place that impresses all visitors with its beautiful nature. This site is so huge that it is located in three states at the same time, so you should go by car or rent it and spend several days traveling through it if you want to see everything. The park is full of various mountains and canyons that seem to form waves in the landscape and turn it into the illimitable ocean of green plants and brown rocks. Except for that, when driving along the old road, you can literary get into the clouds, as some places of interest are very high. When you look through this milk-white pall, the world around seems to fade so that nature becomes even more bright and vivacious as you come into the sunlight.

A park is a pleasant place for plants, as it does not lack water resources. A wide range of different trees, bushes, and flowers can capture the attention of true flora lovers. Along with the rivers, waterfalls, and geysers, they create an unspeakable atmosphere that can be experienced only in Yellowstone.

They sing songs together, share emotions, and complain about the things they do not like, as the wind changes. Water and plant music mean much for this park, as it allows the visitors to listen to Yellowstone’s heart beating. The sounds of volcanoes and geysers resemble one’s sniffing and blowing, representing the park as a slipping monster that is extremely dangerous when it wakes up but enormously adorable while watching dreams.

Being a reservation, Yellowstone tends to leave the environment in its natural state, not affected by human beings and their technologies. Unlike all those zoos that you can visit in your hometown where animals are held in cages and aviaries, the park provides an opportunity to get acquainted with different species of ungulates, fish, and birds. Personally, I had a chance to pet a real bison that was fearless enough to come close. Its harsh and thick wool cannot be compared to that any domestic animal has, which allows us to feel how the worlds of freedom and domestication differ even within one country. A lot of animals that leave in Yellowstone National Park got used to people around and are not afraid of them. Thus, it is even possible to touch the rough and hard antlers of elks that walk nearby.

It is impossible to call Yellowstone an ugly place that has nothing interesting to see; however, some sites in the park are full of sulfur and smell as a rotten egg, which affects people’s impressions adversely. Unfortunately, the odor is mainly gathered near the things that attract visitors’ attention, such as the Mud Volcano.

Even near the geysers, one cannot enjoy the smell of freshwater or grass because of the high degree of sulfur impregnation. Still, they say that several years ago the Park Service decided to implement changes to cope with this drawback. They started to dispense air freshener in order to make this odor not so unpleasant and noticeable, which appealed to the majority of the visitors. Even though the small remained, you should not be frightened by this fact, as some territories of Yellowstone reveal the true fresh scent of nature.

The majority of the visitors come to Yellowstone for several days that is why the Park Services made sure that everyone can have an opportunity not to stay hungry and find a huge variety of different products both in shops and restaurants. My family cooked for itself almost always so that the taste of Yellowstone does not really differ to me from the other places in the USA. Even in the restaurant, you can order a dish that represents international cuisine and is not extraordinary.

It is strictly forbidden to hunt in the park so Yellowstone is not the place where you can try one of the representatives of the fauna. Still, I recommend you to order fresh fruit and vegetables that are in season in the states. I am looking forward to seeing Yellowstone National Park again because it has an inexhaustible source of nature’s wonders.

• Chicago (A-D)
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IvyPanda. (2022, June 18). Senses of Yellowstone National Park. https://ivypanda.com/essays/yellowstone-national-park-descriptive-essay/

"Senses of Yellowstone National Park." IvyPanda , 18 June 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/yellowstone-national-park-descriptive-essay/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Senses of Yellowstone National Park'. 18 June.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Senses of Yellowstone National Park." June 18, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/yellowstone-national-park-descriptive-essay/.

1. IvyPanda . "Senses of Yellowstone National Park." June 18, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/yellowstone-national-park-descriptive-essay/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Senses of Yellowstone National Park." June 18, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/yellowstone-national-park-descriptive-essay/.

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President Theodore Roosevelt’s Speech at Yellowstone

Hiking History

President Theodore Roosevelt camped in the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park for 16 days in 1903, spending his time writing reports on the condition of game animals in the park, studying their habits and numbers.

On April 24th President Roosevelt dedicated a new arched cornerstone gateway entrance to the Park, delivering a short speech about its beauty and importance to the American people.

This brief look back in time gives us some insight into the thoughts and emotions of a nation that was still pioneering its wild lands. Yellowstone, according to Roosevelt, was a beacon of natural beauty unrivaled throughout the world. Known as a staunch advocate of conservation, President Theodore Roosevelt helped establish a handful of National Parks and over a dozen National Monuments.

“We have fallen heirs to the most glorious heritage a people ever received, and each one must do his part if we wish to show that the nation is worthy of its good fortune.” -Theodore Roosevelt

His conservative influences played an important role during a time when America was rushing forward into the 20th century with expansion and development topping the to-do lists. While Congress fought against his efforts to preserve public lands and establish national parks he was known to lay down his executive power to protect lands when necessary.

Here is a peek into his mind, and his passions.

Speech of President Roosevelt

At the laying of the cornerstone of gateway to Yellowstone National Park

Gardiner, Montana, April 24, 1903

Mr. Mayor; Mr. Superintendent; and my Fellow Citizens:

I wish to thank the people of Montana generally, those of Gardiner and Cinnabar especially, and more especially still all those employed in the park, whether in civil or military capacity, for my very enjoyable two weeks holiday.

It is a pleasure now to say a few words to you at the laying of the cornerstone of the beautiful road which is to mark the entrance to this Park. The Yellowstone Park is something absolutely unique in this world, so far as I know. Nowhere else in any civilized country is there to be found such a tract of veritable wonderland made accessible to all visitors, where at the same time not only the scenery of the wilderness, but the wild creatures of the Park are scrupulously preserved, as they were, the only change being that these same wild creatures have been so carefully protected as to show a literally astounding tameness.

The creation and preservation of such a great natural playground in the interest of our people as a whole is a credit to the nation; but above all a credit to Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. It has been preserved with wise foresight. The scheme of its preservation is noteworthy in its essential democracy. Private game preserves, though they may be handled in such a way as to be not only good things for themselves but good things for the surrounding community, can yet never be more than poor substitutes, from the standpoint of the public, for great national playgrounds such as thus Yellowstone Park.

This Park was created, and is now administered, for the benefit and enjoyment of the people. The Government must continue to appropriate for it especially in the direction of completing and perfecting an excellent system of driveways. But already its beauties can be seen with great comfort in a short space of time and at an astoundingly small cost, and with the sense on the part of every visitor that it is in part his property, that it is the property of Uncle Same and therefore of all of us.

The only way that the people as a whole can secure to themselves and their children the enjoyment in perpetuity of what the Yellowstone Park has to give, is by assuming the ownership in the name of the nation and by jealously safeguarding and preserving the scenery, the forests, and the wild creatures. When we have a good system of carriage roads throughout the Park – for of course, it would be very unwise to allow either steam or electric roads in the Park– we shall have a region as easy and accessible to travel in as it is already every whit as interesting as in similar territory of the Alps or the Italian Riviera. The geysers, the extraordinary hot springs, the lakes, the mountains, the canyons, and cataracts unite to make this region something not wholly to be paralleled elsewhere on the globe.

It must be kept for the benefit and enjoyment of all of us; and I hope to see a steadily increasing number of our people take advantage of its attractions. At present, it is rather singular that a greater number of people come from Europe to see it than come from our own eastern states to see it. The people nearby seem awake to its beauties; and I hope that more and more our people who dwell far off will appreciate its really marvelous character. Incidentally, I should like to point out that sometime people will surely awake to the fact that the Park has special beauties to be seen in winter; and any hardy man who can go through it in that season on skis will enjoy himself as he scarcely could elsewhere.

I wish especially to congratulate the people of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, and notably you of Gardiner and Cinnabar and the immediate outskirts of the Park, for the way in which you heartily cooperate with the Superintendent to prevent acts of vandalism and destruction. Major Pitcher has explained to me how much he owes to your cooperation and your lively appreciation of the fact that the Park is simply being kept in the interest of all of us, so that everyone may have the chance to see its wonder with ease and comfort at the minimum of expense.

I have always thought it was a liberal education to any man of the east to come west, and he can combine profit with pleasure if he will incidentally visit this Park – and the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, and the Yosemite, and take the sea voyage to Alaska. Major Pitcher reports to me, by the way, that he has received invaluable assistance from the game warden of Montana and Wyoming, and that the present game warden of Idaho has also promised his hearty aid.

A post shared by Better Hiker (@betterhiker) on May 18, 2018 at 2:55pm PDT

The preservation of the forests is of course the master of prime importance in every public reserve of this character. In this region of the Rocky Mountains and the great plains the problem of the water supply is the most important which the homemaker has to face. Congress has not of recent years done anything wiser than in passing the irrigation bill; and nothing is more essential to the preservation of the water supply than the preservation of the forests. Montana has in its water power a source of development which has hardly yet been touched.

This water power will be seriously impaired if ample protection is not given the forests. Therefore this Park, like the forest reserves generally, is of the utmost advantage to the country around from the merely utilitarian side. But of course this Park, also because of its peculiar features, is to be preserved as a beautiful natural playground. Here all the wild creatures of the old days are being preserved, and their overflow into the surrounding country means that the people of the surrounding country, so long as they see that the laws are observed by all, will be able to insure to themselves and to their children and to their children’s children much of the old-time pleasure of the hardy life of the wilderness and of the hunter in the wilderness.

This pleasure, moreover, can under such conditions be kept for all who have the love of adventure and the hardihood to take advantage of it, with small regard for what their fortune may be. I cannot too often repeat that the essential features in the present management of the Yellowstone Park, as in all similar places, is its essential democracy – it is the preservation of the scenery, of the forests, of the wilderness life and the wilderness game for the people as a whole, instead of leaving the enjoyment thereof to be confined to the very rich who can control private reserves.

I have been literally astounded at the enormous quantities of elk and at the number of deer, antelope and mountain sheep which I have seen on their wintering grounds; and the deer and sheep, in particular, are quite as tame as range stock. A few buffalo are being preserved. I with very much that the Government could somewhere provide for as experimental breeding station of crossbreds between buffalo and the common cattle. If these crossbreds could be successfully perpetuated we should have animals which would produce a robe quite as good as the old buffalo robe with which twenty years ago everyone was familiar, and animals moreover which would be so hardy that I think they would have a distinct commercial importance.

There would, for instance, be admirably suited for Alaska, a territory which I look to see develop astoundingly within the next decade or two, not only because of its furs and fisheries, but because of its agricultural and pastoral possibilities.

In conclusion, let me thank you again for your greeting. It has been to me the most genuine pleasure again to see this great western country. I like the country, but above all I like the men and women.

About The Author

Arthur McMahon

Arthur is the founder and Lead Editor of BetterHiker. He believes we can all better ourselves and the trails we walk, one step at a time.

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Theodore Roosevelt

Remarks at the laying of the cornerstone of the gateway to yellowstone national park in gardiner, montana.

Mr. Mayor, Mr. Superintendent, and my fellow citizens:

I wish to thank the people of Montana generally, those of Gardiner and Cinnabar especially, and more especially still all those employed in the Park, whether in civil or military capacity, for my very enjoyable two weeks' holiday.

It is a pleasure now to say a few words to you at the laying of the cornerstone of the beautiful road which is to mark the entrance to this Park. The Yellowstone Park is something absolutely unique in the world, so far as I know. Nowhere else in any civilized country is there to be found such a tract of veritable wonderland made accessible to all visitors, where at the same time not only the scenery of the wilderness, but the wild creatures of the Park are scrupulously preserved; the only change being that these same wild creatures have been so carefully protected as to show a literally astounding tameness. The creation and preservation of such a great natural playground in the interest of our people as a whole is a credit to the nation; but above all a credit to Mon tana, Wyoming and Idaho. It has been preserved with wise foresight. The scheme of its preservation is noteworthy in its essential democracy. Private game preserves, though they may be handled in such a way as to be not only good things for themselves, but good things for the sur rounding community, can yet never be more than poor substitutes, from the standpoint of the public, for great national playgrounds such as this Yellowstone Park. This Park was created, and is now administered, for the benefit and enjoyment of the people. The government must continue to appropriate for it especially in the direction of completing and perfecting an excellent system of driveways. But already its beauties can be seen with great comfort in a short space of time and at an astoundingly small cost, and with the sense on the part of every visitor that it is in part his property, that it is the property of Uncle Sam and therefore of all of us. The only way that the people as a whole can secure to themselves and their children the enjoyment in perpetuity of what the Yellowstone Park has to give is by assuming the ownership in the name of the nation and by jealously safeguarding and preserving the scenery, the forests, and the wild creatures. When we have a good system of carriage roads throughout the Park—for of course it would be very unwise to allow either steam or electric roads in the Park—we shall have a region as easy and accessible to travel in as it is already every whit as interesting as any similar territory of the Alps or the Italian Riviera. The geysers, the extraordinary hot springs, the lakes, the mountains, the canyons, and cataracts unite to make this region something not wholly to be paralleled elsewhere on the globe. It must be kept for the benefit and enjoyment of all of us; and I hope to see a steadily increasing number of our people take advantage of its attractions. At present it is rather singular that a greater number of people come from Europe to see it than come from our own Eastern States. The people near by seem awake to its beauties; and I hope that more and more of our people who dwell far off will appreciate its really marvelous character. Incidentally I should like to point out that some time people will surely awake to the fact that the Park has special beauties to be seen in winter; and any hardy man who can go through it in that season on skis will enjoy himself as he scarcely could elsewhere.

I wish especially to congratulate the people of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, and notably you of Gardiner and Cinnabar and the immediate outskirts of the Park, for the way in which you heartily co operate with the superintendent to prevent acts of vandalism and destruction. Major Pitcher has explained to me how much he owes to your co-operation and your lively appreciation of the fact that the Park is simply being kept in the interest of all of us, so that every one may have the chance to see its wonders with ease and comfort at the mini mum of expense. I have always thought it was a liberal education to any man of the East to come West, and he can combine profit with pleasure if he will incidentally visit this Park, the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, and the Yosemite, and take the sea voyage to Alaska. Major Pitcher reports to me, by the way, that he has received invaluable assistance from the game wardens of Montana and Wyoming, and that the present game warden of Idaho has also promised his hearty aid.

The preservation of the forests is of course the matter of prime importance in every public reserve of this character. In this region of the Rocky Mountains and the great plains the problem of the water supply is the most important which the home-maker has to face. Congress has not of recent years done anything wiser than in passing the irrigation bill; and nothing is more essential to the preservation of the water supply than the preservation of the forests. Montana has in its water power a source of development which has hardly yet been touched. This water power will be seriously impaired if ample protection is not given the forests. Therefore this Park, like the forest reserves generally, is of the utmost advantage to the country around from the merely utilitarian side. But of course this Park, also because of its peculiar features, is to be preserved as a beautiful natural playground. Here all the wild creatures of the old days are being preserved, and their overflow into the surrounding country means that the people of the surrounding country, so long as they see that the laws are observed by all, will be able to insure to themselves and to their children and to their children's children much of the old-time pleasure of the hardy life of the wilderness and of the hunter in the wilderness. This pleasure, moreover, can under such conditions be kept for all who have the love of adventure and the hardihood to take advantage of it, with small regard for what their fortune may be. I cannot too often repeat that the essential feature in the present management of the Yellowstone Park, as in all similar places, is its essential democracy—it is the preservation of the scenery, of the forests, of the wilderness life and the wilderness game for the people as a whole, instead of leaving the enjoyment thereof to be confined to the very rich who can control private reserves. I have been literally astounded at the enormous quantities of elk and at the number of deer, antelope and mountain sheep which I have seen on their wintering grounds; and the deer and sheep in particular are quite as tame as range stock. A few buffalo are being preserved. I wish very much that the government could somewhere provide for an experimental breeding station of cross-breeds between buffalo and the common cattle. If these cross-breeds could be success fully perpetuated we should have animals which would produce a robe quite as good as the old buffalo robe with which twenty years ago every one was familiar, and animals moreover which would be so hardy that I think they would have a distinct commercial importance. They would, for instance, be admirably suited for Alaska, a territory which I look to see develop astoundingly within the next decade or two, not only, be cause of its furs and fisheries, but because of its agricultural and pastoral possibilities.

Theodore Roosevelt, Remarks at the Laying of the Cornerstone of the Gateway to Yellowstone National Park in Gardiner, Montana Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/343416

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