Mammoth Hot Springs

“ These temperatures are for Mammoth Hot Springs. For the Park Plateau they should be diminished by not less than ten degrees. No month of the year in that region passes without ice-forming frosts. It will be seen that during June, July, August, and September, the thermometer makes excursions to the neighborhood of the nineties. This, however, is only in the middle of the day, and is due to the direct intensity of the sun’s rays. No such heat pervades the general atmosphere. As soon as the sun is near setting, the temperature falls rapidly. ”

“ The Mammoth Hot Springs of the Yellowstone Park are not only beautiful in the tangible forms which they present, and the kaleidoscopic combinations of color which they produce, though their seeming crystal clearness is indescribable, but they have also remarkable medicinal virtues which enhance their interest and practical value. ”

“ The material deposited at any given place commonly reflects the predominant kind of rock through which the hot water has passed during its underground travels. At Mammoth Hot Springs the water passes through thick beds of limestone (which is calcium carbonate) , but in other areas the main rock type through which the water percolates is rhyolite, a rock rich in silica.
Through centuries of intense activity, layers of sinter have built up on the floors of the geyser basins (fig. 44) ; these deposits are generally less than 10 feet thick. ”

“ The climate puts new life and energy into the visitor. Contrary to the general opinion, the climatic conditions in the park are not extreme, notwithstanding its high elevation.43 The average temperature at the Mammoth Hot Springs in January, the coldest month, is 18° F., and in July, the hottest month, 61°. In the plateau regions, averaging fifteen hundred feet higher, the temperature is 8° in January and 51° in July. ”

“ But millions of dollars have been expended in a mechanical way to improve the park. The drive that begins at the railway depot is 150 miles in length and is stocked with elegant stage coaches and cabs made especially for the mountain roads. Hundreds of horses are constantly at work during the summer season conveying the thousands of people from all over the world to and fro from one hot spring and geyser to another. There are hotel accommodations for a thousand people. The Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, which is located at Mammoth Hot Springs, is a very large one. ”

“ Here, however, there was so much steam and boiling water I had no difficulty in getting warm.
We had a skilful driver, who called out the names of the places in a clear voice. This kept the passengers from being under a strain of uncertainty and tense listening.
[68] Obsidian Cliff, formed as the result of volcanic action in ages past, is twelve miles south of Mammoth Hot Springs. It rises two hundred fifty feet above the road and is composed of jet-black, volcanic glass, usually opaque, streaked with red, yellow, and green. ”

“ ICE VENDOR POST OFFICE CLINIC ADMIN. BLDG. CAMPGROUND PHONE NORTH ENTRANCE 5 MILES Water falling on areas south of Mammoth Hot Springs seeps into limestone strata. water + carbon dioxide → mild carbonic acid; this dissolves limestone Carbon dioxide gas rises from magma. magma Hot mineral springs flow from cracks. fault zone Gas (mainly carbon dioxide) escapes—limestone (travertine) forms Board walk The Yellowstone Association ”

“ Hot water is the life of the terraces. Without it terrace growth ceases; the formations weather gray and black, and begin to crumble. Typically the many hot springs gush forth at random, flow a short way, then disappear into a crack or fissure farther down slope. ”

“ This viewpoint offers an excellent overview of the springs and pools of the Lower Terraces. The large blue pool ahead and to the right is Canary Spring. The pools visible to the left are the New Blue Springs complex. The names of these features suggest colors which are inconsistent with what we see today. The color of both features has changed from when they were originally named. Changes in environmental conditions may account for this: perhaps a change in water temperature.
The trail to the left goes around New Blue Spring and on down over the terraces to Minerva Spring. ”

“ There the temperature is more equable than that of the atmosphere without—being cooler in summer and warmer in winter, so that variety is scarcely known—at all events, the extremes of heat and cold are never felt. This is the ease with the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, and other large caverns; and on this account it has been thought that persons suffering from pulmonary complaints might derive benefit by dwelling in caves. There are many such patients who make their home in the Mammoth; and where a commodious hotel enables them to live in comfort, and even luxury! ”

“ The Pullman car, in which we had taken our places at St. Paul, had carried us in safety more than a thousand miles and had left us at the gateway of the park. Before us was a portion of the road, eight miles in length, which leads the tourist to the Mammoth Springs Hotel. On one side an impetuous river shouted a welcome as we rode along. Above us rose gray, desolate cliffs. They are volcanic in their origin. The brand of fire is on them all. They are symbolic, therefore, of the entire park; for fire and water are the two great forces here which have, for ages, struggled for supremacy. ”

“ In unusually hot spring times, the warm waters borne down by the great rivers from their southern feeders thaw the frozen morasses with incredible rapidity, so that the hard ice- bound "tundra" becomes quickly converted into a treacherous bog. In the exceptionally warm season of 1846, the mammoth discovered by Lieut. ”

“ Here man lived on frozen ground on the borders of ice-fields with the reindeer and its companions, as he does to-day in Northern Asia, and here, too—as he does there to-day—he must have found the woolly-haired mammoth preserved by the cold in the ice and frozen ground. The Drift reindeer-men of Central Europe presumably searched for mammoth tusks just as much as the present reindeer-men in North Asia. The great field of mammoth carrion at Predmost was, therefore, a very powerful attraction, not only for the beasts of prey—chief among them wolves—but also for man. ”

“ Houses stick on the sides of the hills, perch on terraces, nestle in the ravines. Nothing is regular, nothing is as might have been expected, but it is all interesting, and promising of something pleasing and picturesque in the future. All the springs, except one, on Hot Springs Mountain are hot, with a temperature ranging from 93° to 157° Fahrenheit; there are plenty of springs in and among the other hills, but they are all cold. It is estimated that the present quantity of hot water, much of which runs to waste, would supply about 19,000 persons daily with 25 gallons each. ”

“ At last we emerge out of a hole, and find ourselves standing on the brink of a precipice, and hear the falling of water from a great height, and by the dim glimmer of our lights we see that there is something before us awfully grand and stupendous, and this is the Mammoth Dome! ”

“ North of this line it is conspicuous by its absence from Postglacial deposits of sand and gravel. For this I should be inclined to account on the hypothesis that this area was defended from the invasion of the mammoths, and, it may be added, of the associated animals [16] , by a system of glaciers radiating from the hills of Wales, Cumberland, the Pennine Chain, and Scotland, which did not melt away much before the mammoth became extinct, and possibly also by a submergence of the low districts. ”

“ It is one of the marvels of the earth's history, that hot springs, or thermal springs, bubble upwards to the light, not only on Mount Ida, the source of the Scamander, but in countless other places and countries on the world's surface. These hot springs would appear to have invited man to their use by their pleasant aspect and by their warmth; and their enjoyment to have suggested the possibility of contriving artificially a similar luxury nearer to his threshold. ”

“ The year 1846, when M. Benkendorf saw his Mammoth, was [210] exceptional on account of its unusually warm summer, so that the ground of the tundra region thawed, and was converted into a morass. Had any Mammoths been alive then, and strayed beyond the limits of the woods into the tundra, probably some of them would have been likewise engulphed, and, when once covered up and protected from the decaying action of the air, the cold of the next winter would have frozen their carcases as this one must have been frozen up. ”

“ Thus was this curious fact consigned to oblivion; nor should we now possess any information respecting the carcase of the mammoth, if the rumour of its discovery had not reached Mr. Adams, a man of great ardour in pursuit of science, who undertook the labour of a journey to these frozen regions, and of preparing these gigantic remains, and transporting them to a great distance.
“The preservation of the flesh of the mammoth through a long series of ages, is not to be wondered at, when we recollect the constant cold and frost of the climate in which it was found. ”

“ READINGS IN PHYSICAL SCIENCE.
P. 255, c. 2.—“Foraminifera,” fo-rămˌi-nĭfˈe-ra.
P. 257, c. 1.—“Hot Springs.” These are in reality Artesian wells, the water rising from great depths. In some places the warm water is utilized, as in Würtemberg, where manufactories are warmed by the water sent through them in pipes. The water is usually pure and the temperature quite uniform. Among the most famous examples of hot springs are those of Arkansas—fifty-seven in number—those of Virginia, and the geysers of Iceland. ”

“ It was strange that whenever they came upon a mammoth imbedded in a cliff, it was always dead. It must be a creature unable to bear the air or the light, and when in the course of its subterranean wanderings it breaks through to the outer air it dies immediately. With so much knowledge of the natural history of the creature to start from, other details grow round it in the usual way. Yakuts and Tunguz have seen the earth heave and sink, as a mammoth walked beneath. ”

“ The natural arch that admits one to Mammoth Cave has a span of 70 ft., and from a ledge above it a cascade leaps 59 ft. to the rocks below, where it disappears. A flight of stone steps leads the way down to a narrow passage, through which the air rushes with violence, outward in summer and inward in winter. The temperature of the cave is uniformly 54° F. throughout the year, and the atmosphere is both chemically and optically of singular purity. While the lower levels are moist from the large pools and rivers that have secret connexion with Green river, the upper galleries are extremely dry. ”

“ The geysers of Yellowstone Park, the hot springs of the Wamchuck district in Oregon, the Steamboat Springs of Nevada, the geysers of California, the hot springs of Salt Lake City, Monroe, etc., in Utah, and the Pagosa in Colorado, are only the most conspicuous among thousands of hot springs which continue in action at the present time. ”

“ At the foot of the first fall, a mammoth spring wells up out of the rock. Nobody tells you about it; you run across it by chance, and it interests you much more in that way. It would seem that a spring throwing out a stream equivalent to a river one hundred yards wide and two feet deep would deserve a little exploitation. ”

“ There are, in many parts of the world, springs, whose waters issue from their reservoirs at temperatures either at or near the boiling point of water. These are called hot or thermal springs. Hot springs are found both in volcanic regions, as well as in regions where there are no volcanoes, but where there are lines of deep fissures or faults. According to Dana, in both of these classes, the cause is to be traced to heat of volcanic or deep subterranean origin. Hot springs are also found in regions where there are no volcanoes. ”

“ Middendorf found it in latitude 66° 30′ N., between the Obi and the Yenisei near the Arctic Circle. In the same year he also found a young animal of the same species in beds of sand and gravel, at about fifteen feet above the level of the sea, near the river Taimyr, in latitude 75° 15′, associated with marine shells of living Arctic species, as well as with the trunk of the larch. But the fourth, and by far the most important, discovery of a Mammoth is described by an eye-witness of its unearthing, and the record is so valuable in its bearings that we give it at some length. ”

“ In 1937 a fine post office was erected in Mammoth. It does business there the year around; while postal stations at Old Faithful, West Thumb, Lake, Fishing Bridge, Canyon, and Tower Falls are open only during the summer season.
Thus does a cross-section of America meet by canyon, geyser, lake, and waterfall. They also foregather around counters, tables, lobbies, and evening camp fires. It would be difficult to find a more representative assembly of American society. Many people consider this interesting human equation one of the most enjoyable experiences in the Park. ”

“ There is no danger if the parties keep together and with the guide, but to attempt to find the way oneself were a useless task. [2] We left the Mammoth Cave Hotel at six in the evening, and had a 19 pleasant ride to Bell’s, at eight miles distance. The road is through the woods and very rough, but will be smoother by and by, when there is more traffic on it. Mr Bell has improved it very much this spring, at his own expense, for he has the conveying of all the visitors from the house to the cave, and very reasonably he does it. ”

“ Long before you reach the neighborhood of the Hot Lakes you find steaming springs, and there is hardly one of them that is not credited with some wonderful healing properties. On an area of a hundred and fifty square miles there are many thousands of hot springs of all temperatures from tepid to boiling, and of all sorts of composition. ”