Yellowstone Has More Than Half of the World's Geysers

Geysers are rare, and most of them are in one park. The U.S. National Park Service lists more than 500 active geysers in Yellowstone National Park, and notes that this is more than half the world’s geysers. They are part of a larger picture. The park has more than 10,000 hydrothermal features in all. Yellowstone holds another distinction. The Park Service states that it is the world’s first national park, established on March 1, 1872. It is big, too. The park covers 3,472 square miles, or 2,221,766 acres, which the Park Service points out is larger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined. Nearly all of it is in one state. About 96 percent of the park is in Wyoming, with 3 percent in Montana and 1 percent in Idaho.