When it comes to tourist attractions in America, Yellowstone National Park is always recommended to be a must-see. Yellowstone is home to a lot of geysers, making its vast landscape a unique one. It is definitely a land that looks like it belonged to another planet.
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One day, a dormant geyser unexpectedly erupted with a cloud of spray and steam. But the geyser did more than just throw up boiling liquids from the ground, park rangers found something startling in the debris that revealed something eerie about the landscape’s past.
A famous attraction
Yellowstone is America’s oldest national park. Located in the western United States, it is a huge preserved area that reaches Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. The park has multiple entrances, making it possible for people from all over the country to access it.
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Over the years, millions of people flock to Yellowstone to take in the dramatic and strange landscape and to get a chance to have a closer look at wildlife. The numerous thermal geysers spread out in the area are one of the park’s biggest attractions.
Famous for geysers
The geysers are spread out around the park and they would erupt several times a day, giving a lot of tourists something to look forward to. But there are also a lot of dormant geysers in the area that could erupt at any time.
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One sleeping geyser is known as the Ear Spring. The Ear Spring geyser erupted on September 2018 and surprised everyone by suddenly spewing a jet of water and debris up into the air. It was the most violent explosion the geyser had after 60 years of dormancy.
A rich history
It did not take long for the area around Ear Spring to be littered with strange relics from the earth below. And what the rangers found when they inspected revealed an interesting look into the past and the habits of their visitors throughout the years.
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As the oldest official national park in America, Yellowstone has a rich history. The vast and mostly untouched land has countless artifacts and objects hidden in the area and tourists and rangers have found some of them every now and then.
So many geothermal features
Geologically speaking, Yellowstone is also a point of interest because it is located on a thin point in the Earth’s crust. Yellowstone is an area where molten magma lurks closely beneath the surface. Because of this, eruptions and seismic activity happen a lot.
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Despite its otherwordly landscape and being one of the most volatile places on the planet, Yellowstone is a fascinating. Home to 500 geysers and other geothermal features, the area must have looked like a hellish landscape to the white settlers back in the 19th century.
The first reserve and national park
When the settlers came to the area, there have been reports of a place where mud boiled and rivers erupted into steam. They thought these were nothing but myths or legends for they never heard of such things. It was not until 1869 that a proper confirmed it.
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Years later, the US Congress announced the creation of Yellowstone National Park – the first reserve and national park in America. There are claims that Yellowstone is the oldest in the world as well.
Danger underneath
So, what is it about Yellowstone that pulls in millions of visitors each year? For most tourists, it is the chance to see a geyser in action. After all, geysers are not just found anywhere.
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But some people warn of something sinister lurking beneath Yellowstone. They believe that the whole area sits on top of a dormant supervolcano and there is no telling when it would erupt and how much damage it could cause.
A supervolcano under the park
According to experts, this Yellowstone supervolcano’s last eruption was more than 640,000 years ago. Theories are that another explosion is long overdue. And in case it happens, this supervolcano explosion can kill millions in America.
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But other experts believe that this eruption will not be happening any time soon. Such an event rarely happens in history. Also, these experts believe that there is not enough magma beneath Yellowstone to cause an explosion of that magnitude.
Follow the rules
Even in its dormant state, deaths have happened as a result of geothermal activity in Yellowstone. Because of these incidents, visitors are always reminded to stick to the boardwalks to ensure that there is a safe distance between them and the geysers.
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In 2018, a man was arrested after footage was shown of him approaching a geyser and placing his head inside. In 2019, a pair of tourists faced criminal charges for wandering dangerously close to an active geyser.
Things in the geyser
When Ear Spring erupted in 2018, the park rangers realized that there was something else dredged up beneath the surface. This was not a surprise since a lot of stuff had been thrown inside these natural geothermal vents.
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The Old Faithful Geyser was used as a laundromat by people throwing in clothes and soap in it. In 2014, a tourist lost control of his drone, and it crashed into a geyser near Grand Prismatic Spring.
Geysers are not for cooking
People also tried to cook food using the geysers. The Fishing Cone Geyser was a favored spot with local fishermen. Every time they caught fish in the nearby Yellowstone Lake, they would dangle the fish over the vent and the steam would be hot enough to cook the fish.
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What they did not know was that the water the Fishing Cone Geyser spewed out actually had arsenic. Once this was discovered, the fishermen stopped coming there and made sure they no longer cooked their fish on the steaming vents.
What happened in Ear Springs
But the attempts to cook food using a geyser did not stop there. In August 2020, a man was caught carrying several cooking pans and two chickens near the Shoshone Geyser Basin. It was clear that he had more than sightseeing in mind.
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He was fined $1,200 for trespassing an off-limits thermal area and violating restrictions. At this point, you may be wondering what was found inside the dormant Ear Springs when it erupted in September 2018.
A violent awakening
Take note that Ear Springs is located on Geyser Hill in the Wyoming part of Yellowstone. It was one of the least visited areas in the park. Ear Spring last erupted in 2004, which meant it had been dormant for 14 years before it erupted again.
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The 2004 eruption of Ear Springs was nothing compared to the violent outburst that happened in 2018. The 2018 eruption was the most powerful one since 1957. Although it was nothing like Old Faithful’s 130-foot spout, it still gave an impressive show.
Strange debris
The 2018 eruption was actually caught on camera. The force of the eruption sent a jet of water and steam that was 30 feet above the sky in Geyser Hill. The spew could be seen for several minutes and the park rangers made their investigation as soon as it settled.
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On the Yellowstone National Park Facebook Page, they posted, “After Ear Spring erupted, employees found a strange assortment of items strewn across the landscape and around its vent.” The officials claimed that there were historic and modern items found on the site.
Unnatural debris
The eruption brought out decades worth of discarded items to the surface. It was just not the usual soda cans and food wrappers that were dislodged from the ground. There was a chunk of cinder block and a pacifier that was believed to be 90 years old!
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Park employees also found several metal signs – one was a warning that they were in an area that grizzly bears frequented. There were also plastic scraps, rubber scraps, and metal cans. Nobody knew how these items got into Ear Spring.
Hundreds of coins
The park rangers also found coins in the area around Ear Spring. In fact, they were able to recover 100 pieces of currency. This reflects all the years people had tossed coins into the geysers thinking that it would bring them good luck or make their wishes come true.
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The officials of Yellowstone presented everything they recovered and warned the public about the dangers of throwing items into the geysers. Can you imagine a geyser interrupting nearby and you get hit with these items?
Geysers can clog up too
Rebecca Roland of Yellowstone elaborated on what happens when debris clogs up a geyser. When the vent is clogged and the spring in the area will stop becoming a hot spring. It either becomes dormant or dies. Yellowstone’s Handkerchief Pool is an example.
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Handkerchief Pool was named that way because tourists have been throwing in dirty rags in the vent and they often emerge clean a few moments later. But after years of this activity, the geyser was clogged and turned dormant.
Ruined because of litter
Another sad example is the Morning Glory Pool. This spring stood out among others because of its bright blue color. But over the years, visitors had thrown in the trash and the buildup eventually damaged the ecosystem and altered its unique coloring.
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“The next time Ear Spring erupts, we hope it’s nothing but natural rocks and water,” the Yellowstone officials disclosed. But it turned out that Ear Spring was not the only geyser to come alive that year.
Another geothermal surprise
Three days after Ear Spring erupted, a new vent appeared near a boardwalk in the area, forcing the park rangers to close off the site. It looked like the unexpected eruption of Ear Spring was just a part of a period of activity that would spread across Yellowstone.
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Experts from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said that there is an 8-foot-diameter area in the park that seems to be “breathing” anew. The ground is rising and falling about 6 inches every 10 minutes. This activity can go on for months.
For future generations
The debris has been cataloged and some of these items will be going to museums. “Stuff like this that can tell us a story, and the history of how people were, unfortunately, using the spring while they were visiting it will definitely be added to the collections.”
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The officials at Yellowstone hoped that this debris would help visitors understand the importance of preserving the geysers by not littering into them. If we want to protect this fascinating landscape for future generations, careless littering needs to stop.