1950s Yellowstone
AA-2026-8DED89
On the image
Yellowstone's hydrothermal pools had been a managed tourist attraction since 1872, and by the 1950s the National Park Service had built boardwalks, posted signs, and produced pamphlets explaining in careful scientific language exactly why visitors should not touch the water. The deep cobalt pool here sits inside a silica-encrusted rim, its surface churning where superheated water forces up through vents at the center — a system that has operated on its own schedule for tens of thousands of years and has no interest in being on anyone's itinerary.
The orange and rust banding along the far edge is thermophilic bacteria, living comfortably at temperatures that would cook a human being, which was not yet the kind of fact that appeared in popular science coverage but would eventually rewrite the textbooks on where life was capable of existing. In the 1950s it was simply the interesting-colored stuff around the pretty blue pool, and a family from Ohio pulled over to take a photograph of it.
The lodgepole pines at the treeline behind the sinter flat are bleached and fallen, killed by the very ground they grew on as the thermal field slowly expanded — a detail nobody drove eight hundred miles to see, but the camera caught it anyway.
Visually related — by likeness
Boiling Hot Spring with Silica Crust, Yellowstone, 1950s. 1950–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-8DED89. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/boiling-hot-spring-with-silica-crust-yellowstone-1950s.
@misc{aaAA20268DED89,
title = {Boiling Hot Spring with Silica Crust, Yellowstone, 1950s},
year = {1950–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-8DED89},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/boiling-hot-spring-with-silica-crust-yellowstone-1950s}
}TY - ART TI - Boiling Hot Spring with Silica Crust, Yellowstone, 1950s PY - 1950–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-8DED89 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/boiling-hot-spring-with-silica-crust-yellowstone-1950s ER -
From the community
Identifications, corrections, and discussion from readers — reviewed by a librarian before appearing here.
Sign in to add an identification, correction, or comment.
No notes yet — be the first to add what you know about this image.