This extraordinary region was first made known in a way in 1807. A
hunter named Coulter visited it, and getting safely back to
civilization, he told such wonderful stories of the hot springs and
geysers that the unbelieving borderers, in derision, called it
"Coulter's Hell." Others visited it subsequently, but their remarkable
tales were generally regarded as romances. The first thorough
exploration was made by Prof. Hayden's scientific party for the
Government in 1871, and his report led Congress to reserve it as a
public Park. The visitor generally first enters the Park at the
Mammoth Hot Springs, which are near the northern verge of the broad
central plateau. Here are the wonderful terraces built up by the
earlier calcareous deposits of these Springs, covering an area of
several square miles, and in the present active operations about two
hundred acres, with a dozen or more terraces, and some seventy flowing
springs, the temperature of the water rising to 165°. The lower
terrace extends to the edge of the gorge of Gardiner River, with high
mountain peaks beyond. The hotel is built on one of the terraces, with
yawning caves and the craters of extinct geysers at several places in
front. The higher terraces rise in white, streaked with brown and
other tints, as the overflowing, trickling waters may have colored
them. The best idea that can be got of this place is by conjuring up
the popular impression of the infernal regions with an ample stock of
heat and brimstone. For a long distance, rising from the top of the
gorge of Gardiner River westward in successive terraces to a height of
a thousand feet above the stream, the entire surface is underlaid with
sulphur, subterranean fires, boiling water and steam, which make their
way out in many places. The earth has been cracked by the heat into
fissures, within which the waters can be heard boiling and running
down below, and everything on the surface which can be, is burnt up.
Almost every crevice exudes steam and hot water; sulphur hangs in
stalactites from the caves; and in some places the odors are nearly
overpowering. It is no wonder the Indians avoided this forbidding
region, and that the tales told by the early explorers were
disbelieved. Yet it is as attractive as it is startling. The hot
springs form shallow pools, where the waters run daintily over their
rim-like edges, trickling down upon terrace after terrace, forming the
most beautiful shapes of columns, towers and coral decorations from
the lime deposits, and painting them with delicious coloring in red,
brown, green, yellow, blue and pink. So long as the waters run, this
decoration continues, but when the flow ceases, the atmosphere turns
everything white, and the more delicate formations crumble. The whole
of this massive structure has been built up by ages of the steady
though minute deposits of the waters, the rate being estimated at
about one-sixteenth of an inch in four days. The rocks upon which
these calcareous deposits are made belong to the middle and lower
Cretaceous and Jurassic formations, with probably carboniferous
limestones beneath that put the deposits in the waters. A dozen
different terraces can be traced successively upward from the river
bank to the highest part of the formation. Two cones of extinct
geysers rise from the deposits, near the hotel,--the Liberty Cap,
forty-five feet high, and the Giant's Thumb, somewhat smaller,--both
having been built up by the deposits from orifices still seen in their
tops, whence the waters have ceased flowing. All these springs, as
deposits are made, shift their locality, so that the scene gradually
changes as the ages pass.
In climbing about this remarkable formation, some of the most
beautiful bits of construction and coloring nature has ever produced
are disclosed. The Orange Geyser has its sides streaked with orange,
yellow and red from the little wavelets slowly trickling out of the
steaming spring at the top, which goes off at quick intervals like the
exhaust of a steam-engine. At the Stalactite Cave the flowing waters
add green to the other colors, and also scale the rocks in places like
the back of a fish, while below hang stalactites with water dropping
from them. The roof of the cave is full of beautiful formations. The
water is very hot when it starts from the top, but becomes quite cold
when it has finished its journey down. One of the finest formations is
Cleopatra's Bath, with Cupid's Cave beneath, the way to them being
through Antony's Gate, all built up of the deposits. Here rich
coloring is painted on the rocks, with hot water and steam amply
supplied to the bath, which has 154° temperature at the outer verge.
All the springs form flat basins with turned-up edges, over which the
waters flow, and trickling down the front of the terrace, paint it.
When the flow ceases, and the surface has been made snowy white by the
atmosphere, it becomes a spongy and beautiful coral, crumbling when
touched, and into which the foot sinks when walked upon. The
aggregation of the currents run in streams over terrace after
terrace, spread out to the width of hundreds of feet, painting them
all, and then seeking the Gardiner River, flowing through a deep gorge
in front of the formation. Everything subjected to the overflow of
these currents gets coated by the deposits, so that visitors have many
small articles coated to carry away as curiosities.
Among the many beautiful formations made by these Hot Springs, the
most elaborate and ornamental are the Pulpit Terraces. These are a
succession of magnificent terraces, fifty feet high, with beautifully
colored columnar supports. There is a large pulpit, and in front, on a
lower level, the font, with the water running over its edges. The
pulpit, having been formed by a spring that has ceased action, is
white, while the font is streaked in red and brown. Finely carved
vases filled with water stand below, and alongside the pulpit there is
an inclined surface, whitened and spread in wrinkles like the drifted
snow, which requires very little imagination to picture as a
magnificent curtain. Beyond is a blackened border like a second
curtain, the coloring being made by a spring impregnated with arsenic.
In front of this gorgeous display the surface is hot and cracked into
fissures, with bubbling streams of steaming water running through it,
and great pools fuming into new basins with turned-up edges, over
which the hot water runs. Upon one of these pools seems to be a
deposit of transparent gelatine, looking like the albumen of an egg,
streaked into fantastic shapes by elongated bubbles. Everywhere are
surfaces, over which the water runs, that are covered with regular
formations like fish scales. It is impossible to adequately describe
this extraordinary place, combining the supposed peculiarities and
terrors of the infernal regions with the most beautiful forms and
colors in decoration. The great hill made by these Hot Springs was,
from its prevailing color, named the White Mountain by Hayden. The
springs extend all the way down to the river bank, and there are some
even in the river bed. It is a common experiment of the angler to hook
a small fish in the cold water of the river, and then, without
changing position, to swing him on the hook over into the basin of one
of these hot springs to cook him. The formation of the terraces is
wedge-shaped, and runs up into a gulch between the higher mountains,
which have pines scattered over them, and also grow some grass in
sheltered nooks. It is said that the volume of the springs is
gradually diminishing.