Since then, Yellowstone's living, breathing landscape continues to evolve. A long, slow drift to the confluence of what is now Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho and one cataclysmic eruption later, the place we now know as Yellowstone was born – including its famous geysers, hot springs, and travertine falls. But then a geologic hot spit that once sat underneath what is now Idaho's Craters of the Moon National Monument shifted to the northeast where the Rocky Mountains meet the Snake River Plain.

Millions of years ago, this was a fairly ordinary swath of rivers, mountains, and grassy valleys. Yellowstone National Park's Grand Prismatic Spring is the largest hot spring in the United States and the third-largest in the world © Edward Fielding / Shutterstock About Yellowstone National Park Whether you're visiting for the very first time or you've come back again and again over the years, you're in for a treat whenever you set foot in the park. And while some elements like wildlife and weather can be unpredictable, one thing is for sure. Open ten months out of the year, there's something new to experience in any season. There's certainly no bad time to visit Yellowstone. It's also continued to attract visitors, whether they're the ancestors of the Hidatsa following winter game, colonial-era settlers, or vacationing families on a classic summer road trip.

Yellowstone was named by the Indigenous Hidatsa people whose phrase Mi tsi a-da-zi called attention to the unusual hue of the stones lining the Yellow Rock River.įor thousands of years, Yellowstone's unique landscape has changed in ways both dramatic and minute. This place was named not by the French fur trappers who wandered through in the late 1700s looking for pelts or by John Colter – the member of the famous Lewis and Clark Expedition who struck off on his own and stumbled across a place so uncanny his reports of what he saw were dismissed as pure fantasy.

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