by Susan McCloskey illustrated by Adair Payne

Photo Credits: Cover Spread, Jeff Henry; p. 2-3, 16, Jeff Henry; p. 4, Jeff Henry; p. 7, Barbara Magnuson/Visuals Unlimited; p. 8, Jeff Henry; p. 9, L. Linkhart/Visuals Unlimited; p. 11, Jeff Henry; p. 12, The National Park Service; p. 13, The National Park Service; p. 14, Jeff Henry/RocheJaune Pictures; p. 15, The National Park Service

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Yellowstone is huge. Its 3,472 square miles make it bigger than the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. Yellowstone is wild. It has a greater concentration of animals than any other area in the United States except Alaska. Yellowstone has many wonders less fearsome than steaming volcanoes. You can walk and hike on its mountains or meander through its valleys. You can fish in its streams, brooks, rivers, and lakes. If you are feeling lazy, you can just sit and wait for some of Yellowstones animals to show themselves. If youre lucky, you might see elk, deer, or bison. (Be careful, thoughyou might also see bears and mountain lions!) While your waiting, you can relax, enjoying some of the most spectacular scenery in the world. What caused the wonders of Yellowstone? Change change that is still going on at this very moment!

Mommoth Hot Springs Gallatin Range

MONTANA WYOMING Roosevelt Lodge Yellowstone River Mt. Washburn Lower Falls Upper Falls

Old Morning Glory Pool Faithful Geyser Devils Punchbowl Shoshone Lake Yellowstone Lake

Continental Divide

by Susan McCloskey illustrated by Adair Payne

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CONTENTS The Wonders of Yellowstone. . . 3 The Battle of Yellowstone . . . . . 5 Volcanoes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Glaciers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Geysers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Hot Springs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Mud Pots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Yellowstones Future . . . . . . . 14 Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

THE WONDERS OF YELLOWSTONE Steaming volcanoes! Shaking, quaking ground! Plopping, slopping mud! Hissing, scalding jets of water shooting sky-high! No, these are not scenes from some strange planet in a faraway Yellowstone National Park galaxy. They are some of the featured attractions of a place that millions of people visit every year Yellowstone National Park. President Ulysses S. Grant set Yellowstone aside as a national park in 1872. It is the oldest national park in the world. Most of Yellowstone is in Wyoming, but its wildest and remotest areas are in Idaho and Montana, in the Rocky Mountain range.

Yellowstone is huge. Its 3,472 square miles make it bigger than the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. Yellowstone is wild. It has a greater concentration of animals than any other area in the United States except Alaska. Yellowstone has many wonders less fearsome than steaming volcanoes. You can walk and hike on its mountains or meander through its valleys. You can fish in its streams, brooks, rivers, and lakes. If you are feeling lazy, you can just sit and wait for some of Yellowstones animals to show themselves. If youre lucky, you might see elk, deer, or bison. (Be careful, thoughyou might also see bear and mountain lion!) While youe waiting, you can relax, enjoying some of the most spectacular scenery in the world. What caused the wonders of Yellowstone? Change change that is still going on at this very moment!

THE BATTLE OF YELLOWSTONE About 570 million years ago, large areas of what we now call North America were flat and low. There was nothing to hold back an ancient inland sea, which flooded the Yellowstone area many times. At last the sea retreated, revealing a gently rolling plain. It must have looked as if the sea had sculpted it. Then, about 75 million years ago, a great battle began. The battle was between powerful forces in the earths outer layerits crust. The earths crust is broken up into huge pieces called plates. Plates can drift apart, or they can bump together. The bumping causes layers of rock to slowly bend and crumple. It can also cause cracks called faults. Along these faults large chunks of earth can be pushed upand up and upuntil they become mountains. The Rocky Mountains were raised during this ancient battle between opposing plates.

Mountains can form when huge chunks of earth are pushed up along a fault.

VOLCANOES After the Rocky Mountains were raised, an enormous pool of melted rock formed under Yellowstone. About 2 million years ago, faults in the earths surface enabled melted rock to explode from the ground. Melted rock is called magma when it is underground. When it comes to the surface, it is called lava. These early eruptions of magma built up into huge volcano cones. The cones erupted easily. Each time they erupted, they spewed tons of ash into the air. The ash sifted through the surrounding forests thick canopy and fell to the ground. Trees and plants were suffocated in a layer of ash up to fifteen feet deep. Gradually, buried tree trunks petrified, or turned to stone. Hundreds and even thousands of years passed between eruptions. After each one the cycle would begin again. A new layer of soil would build up and a new forest would grow, only to be destroyed by a new eruption. Specimen Ridge in Yellowstone Park reveals proof of this cycle. Twenty-seven petrified forests can be found there, one on top of the other.

About 600,000 years ago, there was more volcanic activity. Magma surged upward to form a large underground pool. It made the ground above it rise in a dome about sixty miles across. The rocks at the domes surface cracked because of the pressure from beneath. The cracks reached down to the magma. A huge eruption followed as gas in the magma exploded through the cracks, spewing ash fifty miles into the air. The explosion destroyed the surrounding countryside. Nothing was left but smoking embers.

So much magma exploded from the dome that it collapsed. A huge crater was formed. After many years water filled the crater, creating a lake. Finally the water overflowed, pouring from the crater at its lowest point. It joined water from the Yellowstone River. Over time, the river cut a canyon in the rock. It is called the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River. It is about fifteen miles long. In some places it is more than 1,000 feet deep. Part of the canyon lies over a pool of magma. Water heated by the magma seeps into the rock of the canyon. Slowly, over thousands of years, the rock has been baked and boiled. Because of this slow cooking, its color has changed from brown and gray to bright yellow.

GLACIERS Some time after the canyon was formed, the weather turned colder. It got so cold in the mountains that winter snow never melted in the spring. Instead, it formed sheets of ice, called glaciers. Some of the glaciers were more than 3,000 feet thick. It was not the areas first ice age, and it would not be the last. During each ice age the glaciers inched down the mountains. They scraped and scoured the landscape. They dug out valleys and blocked rivers and streams. The glaciers finally got to the canyon. If they had veered off and followed the path of the river, they would have dug out a U-shaped valley. Instead, they scraped across the canyon, flattening the land around its edges. Eventually, glaciers covered most of the park. When they melted, they released boulders they had picked up during their journey. They also released tons of water, which filled hollows in the ground, creating glacial lakes.

GEYSERS The glaciers are gone. However, the magma pool beneath the park is still there. Heat from it causes one of Yellowstones most exciting featuresIts more than 200 geysers. What makes a geyser? Besides heat, it needs water. Yellowstone gets a lot of water as rain or melted snow. Some of the water runs off into rivers, streams, and brooks. Much of it seeps into the ground. The deeper it goes, the closer it gets to rocks heated by magma, and the hotter it gets. The water gets so hot that it should boil. However, the water is so deep and the pressure on it so great that it can neither boil nor turn to steam. All it can do is rise toward the surface, and as it does, the pressure on it lessens. The water begins to boil, turning to steam. The steam erupts from the ground through a small opening. This reduces the pressure on the hot water even more, and it begins to boil furiously. A column of steam bursts from the ground. The explosion can be so strong that the ground trembles. Finally, steam stops forming. The eruption appears to have dwindled and then finally stops. Then the cycle begins again.

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Old Faithful erupts every 33 to 96 minutes. Its spray sometimes goes nearly 200 feet.

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Grand Prismatic is the biggest hot spring in Yellowstone.

HOT SPRINGS In some places in Yellowstone, hot water can rise freely through openings in the rock. Often it collects in bowlshaped hollows, forming hot springs. The springs stay at about the same temperature winter and summer. Some are too hot to touch. Emerald, Sapphire, Opal, Turquoise, Topazthe names of some of the hot springs describe their beautiful colors. The springs can be red, blue, yellow, orange, green, brown, gray, and even a combination of these colors. Some get their color from minerals or from tiny plants called algae. Others get their color by reflecting the blue sky. These blue springs are usually the hottest of alltoo hot for algae to grow in.

Mud pots are also called paint pots. They are usually cream, gray, or black in color.

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MUD POTS Mud pots are like hot springs, except that they dont have much water. What little water there is mixes with gases that contain a lot of acid. The resulting liquid dissolves the rock around it, creating mud of many different colors. Rising gases can burp the mud several feet into the air. These small explosions create different sounds, depending on where the mud pot is. Some people call it mud pot music. Mud pots can be dangerous. They can form a crust that looks thick enough to walk on, but isnt. Falling in can result in serious burns. Because it is the parks policy to keep the park natural, visitors cannot count on railings and barriers to keep them safe. They must use their own judgment and common sense.

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Scalded trees show the presence of new underground springs of hot water.

YELLOWSTONES FUTURE Yellowstone is forever changing. Parts of it are cooling off, while others are heating up. Trees that once were green are now dead and dry as tinder because of scalding water that has newly sprung up around them. Some of these changes may seem small. However, Yellowstone may be headed for bigger changes. This is because its volcanoes are not dead, its pool of magma is as hot as ever, and it still has earthquakes. What does this mean for Yellowstones future? No one knows for sure. Some geologistsscientists who study the earths rocks and soilbelieve that Yellowstone is in a dying stage of a volcanic cycle.

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However, other geologists remind us that cycles repeat themselves. Even if Yellowstones underground activity is dying now, it may well heat up again. If Yellowstones volcanic cycle does begin again, when might there be another big blast? Not very soon, according to geologists. Dont forget, Yellowstones biggest eruption happened 600,000 years ago. It may be an equally long time before there is another big explosion. Whatever happens, it is not likely to come as a surprise. Thats because geologists use scientific equipment to record the movement of the earth under Yellowstone. With this technology, geologists can warn people if a destructive eruption is coming. No one can say what Yellowstone will look like in the distant future. We only know that it might look much different from the way it does today.

Yellowstone keeps its beauty in the winter.

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GLOSSARY acid (p. 13) a strong substance that can burn and dissolve algae (p. 12) small plants that have no roots or stems Algae grow in wet or damp places crater (p. 8) a big hole in the ground crust (p. 5) the hard outer layer of the earth faults (p. 5) large cracks in the earths crust geologists (p. 14) scientists who study the earths rocks and soil hot springs (p. 12) hollows containing water heated underground lava (p. 6) melted rock that flows from faults magma (p. 6) melted rock underneath the ground mud pots (p. 13) hot springs that form mud because they dont have much water petrify (p. 6) to turn to stone plates (p. 5) huge slabs of the earths crust that drift

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Old Faithful erupts every 33 to 96 minutes. Its spray sometimes goes nearly 200 feet.

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Think and Respond

1 2 3 4 5 6
How do the captions help you better understand the photographs in the book? Find the graphic aids in the book. How do they help you understand the text? What is the main idea of this book? Give details that support your answer. How do you think Yellowstone got its name? Compare and contrast Yellowstone to another natural area you know. How is it similar? How is it different? Which part of Yellowstone did you find the most interesting? Why?

Letter Imagine that you have just hiked with some friends through Yellowstone. Write a letter to a friend who couldnt join you on the hike. Describe some of the things you saw and heard. How did they make you feel?

School-Home Connection Share the selection with a family member. Discuss natural wonders he or she has seen, such as mountains and waterfalls.