Established March 1st 1872, Yellowstone is the world’s first national park.  Larger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined, its area comprises almost 3500 square miles across Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.  

Yellowstone National Park sits atop four overlapping volcanic calderas.  When the most recent eruption occurred, 630,000 years ago, it displaced enough rock to cover most of North America in 6 feet of volcanic ash.   Half of the world’s documented geysers are within it’s boundaries as well as a host of hot springs, fumaroles, and mud pots.

Thermally and seismically active as Yellowstone may be, it also teems with wildlife. The park provides a habitat to the largest concentration of mammals in the United States outside of Alaska.  Sixty-seven mammals call the park home, including seven large predators species- black bears, lynx, coyotes, grizzly bears, mountain lions, wolves, and wolverines- and eight large ungulates- bison, moose, elk, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, and three species of deer. Bald eagles and falcons nest at Yellowstone, among 150 other species, and thirteen species of native fish dwell in its rivers and streams.

This installation of Special Collections features sounds recorded at Yellowstone National Park as part of a collaboration between staff at the Natural Sounds and Night Skies division of the National Park Service and the Sound and Light Ecology team at Colorado State University.

Recordings made of other national parks as part of this project are available at http://www.soundandlightecologyteam.colostate.edu/recordings.html