Yellowstone National Park is just a cool place. If you’re not using it for anything in your geography and U.S. history courses, you’re missing out.
Here’s a ten-minute video that the producers hope you’ll show far and wide to encourage television stations to pick up the series. It’s a ten-minute pilot for “Travelers’ Tales,” featuring outdoor writer Tim Cahill, a founder of Outside magazine, and photographer Tom Murphy.
Here are some of the points you might use in class:
- Yellowstone in winter, especially the wildlife, like bison, elk and coyotes (all shown), and wolves (not shown)
- Volcanic geology — Yellowstone is the world’s largest caldera, after all
- Diversity of landforms in the U.S., or in the world. More than half the hot water features on the planet are in Yellowstone
- Travel and adventure
- What makes good writing (travel writing in this case)
- Western geography
- Development of the west, especially after the Lewis and Clark Expedition
The video features a lot of snow, elk, bison and coyotes, hot springs flowing into a river making swimming in January feasible, Mammoth Hot Springs and the travertine pools, and the cold northern desert of sagebrush and juniper.
Questions you might consider to turn this into a warm-up exercise (bell ringer):
Geography, not answered in the video (map or internet exercise):
- Yellowstone National Park covers parts of which three states?
- Yellowstone National Park is mostly located in which state?
- What is the most famous feature of Yellowstone National Park?
- Ashfall Beds State Park features ancient mammals killed by an eruption in the Yellowstone Caldera. Where is Ashfall Beds State Park?
- Thomas Moran played a key role in getting Congress to designate Yellowstone as a park. What did he do to help convince Congress to act?
Geography, answered in the video:
- What year was Yellowstone designated a National Park by Congress?
- What sort of volcanic feature is the entire Yellowstone area?
- The Yellowstone Caldera explodes catastrophically about every 600,000 years, according to some geologists. How long has it been since the last such catastrophic explosion?
- The wags say there are two seasons in Yellowstone, ______ and winter.
- What is a “hot pot?”