Yellowstone National Park is 3,468 square miles or 2,219,823 acres. For perspective, the state of Rhode Island is 1,545 square miles. The size of Yellowstone has not changed since 1872, when President Grant signed a law to "withdraw from settlement, occupancy, or sale...a tract of land fifty-five by sixty-five miles, about the sources of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers, and dedicates and sets apart as a great national park ...for the benefit and enjoyment of the people."
Miles
The distance from Yellowstone's south entrance on US 89 north of Moran, Wyo., in Grand Teton National Park to the north entrance at Gardiner, Mont., in Gallatin National Forest is 63 miles. From the east entrance near Cody, Wyo., in Shoshone National Forest to the west entrance at West Yellowstone, Mont., is 54 miles. Yellowstone has 1,200 miles of hiking trails and 466 miles of public roads, including 300 miles open to bicycling. The greater Yellowstone ecosystem includes 28,125 square miles in Yellowstone and adjacent Grand Teton national parks, plus seven national forests and three national wildlife refuges.
Yellowstone Caldera
Yellowstone Caldera is 45 miles long and 30 miles wide, or 1,350 square miles. The caldera formed more than 600,000 years ago. The interior of the Earth from surface to center is about 4,000 miles. Most of Earth's interior is magma, covered by a crust that measures three to 38 miles thick. The crust beneath Yellowstone Caldera is only three miles thick. Magma near the surface heats groundwater and surface water to form more than 10,000 hydrothermal features, including more than 300 geysers, more than half of the geysers worldwide.
Yellowstone Lake
Yellowstone Lake measures 20 miles north to south and 14 miles east to west. The surface area is 132 square miles. The southern half of the lake is in Yellowstone Caldera. Recreation is permitted along the 141 miles of shoreline, although some areas are accessible only by boat. The Yellowstone ice cap was three-fourths of a mile thick above the lake 25,000 years ago.
Forests
Forest covers 2,774.4 square miles (1,775,833 acres) of Yellowstone, or 80 percent of the park's total area. Most of the forestland is lodgepole pine, along with fir and Engelmann spruce, which are "fire adapted." Their cones release seeds when heated by a burn. In 1988, about 1,239 square miles (793,000 acres) were burned by wildfire. Surveys inside the park indicated that the fire heated only 1 percent of soils enough to destroy plant seeds and roots. Under burned lodgepole pine, surviving seeds ranged from 50,000 to 1 million per acre. (One square mile is 640 acres.)
Wetlands
Yellowstone has 357 square miles (228,766 acres) of wetlands, or 10 percent of the park's area. Lacustrine environments (lakes and ponds) are 152 square miles (100,888 acres), or 4.5 percent of the park's wetlands, including both limnetic wetlands deeper than 6.5 feet and littoral wetlands shallower than 6.5 feet. Riverine environments (streams) cover 14 square miles, and 87 percent of these wetlands are "upper perennial" streams, with rapid flow and cascading white water. Palustrine wetlands such as bogs or marshes dominated by plant cover are 185.2 square miles (118,528.3 acres), or 51 percent of the park's wetlands
Tags: square miles, miles acres, square miles acres, more than, percent park, Yellowstone Caldera, acres percent
