Established in 1872, Yellowstone National Park is America’s first national park. Prior to the establishment of the park, the U.S. Army provided security for the park from 1886 to 1918. The park has been home to Native Americans for 11,000 years and is home to 1,700 native species of trees and plants.

Fact 1.  Yellowstone has the largest free-roaming herd of bison in the U.S. numbering an estimated 4,000.

Fact 2.   Forest fires are common in the park with the largest fire happening in 1988, when one-third of the park was burnt.

Fact 3.    Records from 1931 indicate that on average there are 22 fires annually caused by lightning strikes. Large fires are less frequent amongst the conifer region whereas amongst the lower grasslands fires occur every 25 to 60 years.

Fact 4.  Yellowstone Park is larger in size than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware combined.

Fact 5.   Yellowstone is home to half of the world’s geothermal features with more than 10,000 located here. More than two-thirds of Earth’s geysers, constituting 300, are also located here. The most famous geyser is Old Faithful.

Fact 6. Old Faithful was once used as a laundromat in the 1880s when members of an expedition found that linen and cotton could be cleaned when placed inside the crater.

Fact 7. Yellowstone is home to the most remote spot in the lower 48 states. The station called Thorofare Station is the most remote dwelling with a distance of around 32 miles from any other road or dwelling.

Fact 8.  Yellowstone has a supervolcano known as the Yellowstone Caldera with the possibility of molten lava existing two miles below ground. Its previous record of eruptions were 2.1 million, 1.3 million and 640,000 years ago.

Fact 9. A thermal basin formed from a lava flow from a volcano has created a Grand Canyon within Yellowstone.

Fact 10. The longest geyser at Yellowstone is called the Steamboat geyser which can shoot water up to 300 feet.