AA-2026-27BC2C
On the image
A visitor stands at the edge of the mineralized travertine terraces at Mammoth Hot Springs, regarding a landscape that the National Park Service had been explaining to Americans for seventy years as proof that the continent held wonders worth preserving in perpetuity. The steaming runoff visible in the middle distance is the park's way of advertising itself—geology in motion, the earth's interior made visible, something no amount of civic boosterism or resort development could manufacture. By the 1940s, the journey to Yellowstone had become a pilgrimage that middle-class Americans undertook with the seriousness of a religious obligation, armed with Kodachrome film and the expectation that natural spectacle would restore something lost to industrial life. The small figures visible on the far terrace are other tourists, each of them standing in roughly the same spot, taking roughly the same photograph, all of them confident they were having an experience that mattered. They were right, though not quite in the way they thought.
Visually related — by likeness
Mammoth Hot Spring Terraces, Yellowstone National Park, circa 1940s. 1950–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-27BC2C. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/mammoth-hot-spring-terraces-yellowstone-national-park-circa-1940s.
@misc{aaAA202627BC2C,
title = {Mammoth Hot Spring Terraces, Yellowstone National Park, circa 1940s},
year = {1950–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-27BC2C},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/mammoth-hot-spring-terraces-yellowstone-national-park-circa-1940s}
}TY - ART TI - Mammoth Hot Spring Terraces, Yellowstone National Park, circa 1940s PY - 1950–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-27BC2C UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/mammoth-hot-spring-terraces-yellowstone-national-park-circa-1940s ER -
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