AA-2026-2967C7
On the image
Sometime in the 1950s, an American family drove the family sedan into Yellowstone National Park and parked it in a gravel lot perhaps thirty yards from a pool of superheated water sitting at a color that has no business existing in nature — the particular electric turquoise of a Yellowstone thermal spring, produced by thermophilic bacteria doing their work at temperatures that would cook a roast. The wooden viewing rail visible at the lot's edge represents the Park Service's entire theory of crowd management at the time: a horizontal plank between the tourists and the caldera. What is striking, looking back, is how casually the parking lot was arranged around the hydrothermal features, as though the geyser basin were a roadside attraction requiring only adequate signage and a place to leave the Buick. Congress had designated Yellowstone the world's first national park in 1872 specifically to prevent this kind of casual annexation of the sublime, and by the 1950s the solution was a paved lot with room for thirty cars at the edge of one of the most geologically volatile surfaces on earth.
Visually related — by likeness
Yellowstone Hot Spring Pool with 1950s Visitor Parking, Upper Geyser Basin. 1950–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-2967C7. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/yellowstone-hot-spring-pool-with-1950s-visitor-parking-upper-geyser-basin.
@misc{aaAA20262967C7,
title = {Yellowstone Hot Spring Pool with 1950s Visitor Parking, Upper Geyser Basin},
year = {1950–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-2967C7},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/yellowstone-hot-spring-pool-with-1950s-visitor-parking-upper-geyser-basin}
}TY - ART TI - Yellowstone Hot Spring Pool with 1950s Visitor Parking, Upper Geyser Basin PY - 1950–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-2967C7 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/yellowstone-hot-spring-pool-with-1950s-visitor-parking-upper-geyser-basin ER -
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