A to Z of Must-Do Travel Experiences – Y for ‘Yellowstone National Park’
{ Tags: Old Geyser, Yellowstone National Park \ Jul6 }
Yellowstone National Park is the world’s first national park containing half of all the world’s known geothermal features, or over 10,000 examples. It spans an area of almost 9,000 square kilometres, covering parts of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana in the United States.
It is particularly well-known for its concentration of geysers, for which there are over 300, roughly two-thirds of all the geysers on the planet. Of these, the most famous is Old Faithful, which erupts approximately every 91 minutes.
The Yellowstone Caldera is the largest volcanic system in North America, and is termed a supervolcano, due to the fact that it was formed as a result of exceptionally large eruptions. It is considered active, and has erupted several times over the last two million years. The most recent eruption occurred 640,000 years ago, and was 1,000 times larger than that of the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.