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Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
This grand canyon is the first big canyon that you will come upon on
the Yellowstone River that is downstream of the Yellowstone Falls in
the park. It is 900 feet deep, and half a mile wide, and certainly
not the Grand Canyon of Arizona fame. This beautiful canyon was
known to the prospectors and trappers that traveled the region, but
there weren't any descriptions until the expedition of 1869 of
Cook-Folsom-Peterson, and also the Washburn-Langford-Doane
Expedition of 1870, that also noted and named "Old Faithful".
Bozeman resident H.F. Richardson, also called Uncle Tom, was given a
permit to run a ferry across the Yellowstone River, where today the
Chittenton Bridge is located, and he could take tourists into the
canyon after the lower falls, and called this Uncle Tom's Trail, in
1890. This trail is gone, but the steep stairway going down to the
base of the lower falls is called Uncle Tom's Trail. They are aware of the reactions of the rhyolite rocks
that can be heated with hydrothermal actions, kind of like a potato
baking. The inside would become soft, while the outside remained
brittle or hard, but easy enough to erode, once the outer skin was
punctured. This kind of activity still is happening in the basin
today, with the many geysers and hot springs that are still local
and active. Even
now, the Yellowstone River is eroding the canyon, and other areas of
the park, as it meanders its way through. Because of the
hydrothermal activity, the colors of the rock formations and the
canyon are quite beautiful, and the rhyolite rocks in the canyon
have various iron compounds in them, that will cause the rocks to
change colors. Much of the canyon is oxidizing, and rusting away the
walls, and the many yellows that are seen here are the results of
that iron compound and not as many believe, the sulphur composition.
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