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Yellowstone is America’s national park located in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. Established in 1872, Yellowstone is the first national park established in the world and covers 8,987 km². Geysers, hot springs, a grand canyon, forests, wilderness, wildlife and even a large lake can all be found inside the park. Due to the park’s diversity of features, the list of activities for visitors is nearly endless. From backpacking to mountaineering, from kayaking to fishing, from sightseeing to watching bison, moose, and elk wandering into the parking lot of the visitor centers, most visitors enjoy a memorable experience in nature.
Most of Yellowstone National Park is on a plateau about 8,000 feet above sea level. The Park also features mountains and canyons. The entire Park is surrounded by mountains. The highest mountain peaks in the Park reach a little over 11,000 feet high. Experience Old Faithful, the most popular geyser in the world, or view the colorful Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. View bears and wolves, elk and buffalo in the Lamar and Hayden valleys. Learn about the history of national parks and the National Park Service. Hiking, camping, fishing, or attending a Ranger-led program or a Yellowstone Institute class, are also popular activities. Skinny-skiing Yellowstone is one of the premier winter-wilderness experiences in North America. To glide along the abandoned, snow-covered trails of the Old Faithful area in winter is to enter bottomless silences and watch tendrils of steam writhing in the chill wind. The geysers occasionally roar and billow, and buffalo use their massive heads to clear the frozen grasslands of snow.Each year, it draws 3 million visitors – one-third of the U.S. population will visit this place during their lifetime. They come to experience the park’s restless geology; to see grizzlies, gray wolves, and herds of buffalo; to fish legendary trout streams like the Madison and the Yellowstone River. Most of all, they come to reconnect in some way with a sense of primordial America, the larger-than-life landscape that existed before railroads, highways, telephones, and a host of other technologies began to cut everything down to size.
Preserved within Yellowstone are many geothermal features and some 10,000 hot springs and geysers, 62% of the planet’s known total. The superheated water that sustains these features comes from the same hot spot described above. Most of the geothermal features (hot springs, geysers, etc) emit gaseous sulfur, and though to most people the odor is not terribly offensive or overwhelming, people with respiratory difficulties should consult their doctors before visiting.

Yellowstone and the huge tracts of national-forest land that ring it comprise one of the world’s last intact temperate ecosystems—all its major species of plants and animals are still present. Yellowstone is widely considered to be the finest mega fauna wildlife habitat in the lower 48 states. Animals found in the park include the majestic American bison (buffalo), grizzly bear, black bear, wolves, elk, moose, mule deer, pronghorn, bighorn sheep and mountain lion.

Together the geothermal features, mountains, gorge, rivers, lakes, and waterfalls in Yellowstone National Park create an amazing physical landscape. There is also a large variety of living things that contribute to the Park’s ecosystem. Yellowstone is one of the most popular national parks in the United States. The park is unique in that it features multiple natural wonders all in the same park. At peak summer levels, 3,500 employees work for Yellowstone National Park concessions and about 800 work for the park.