Best Traditional American Wyoming Yellowstone UNESCO 1978 + 1872 First National Park: Grand Teton, Old Faithful, Jackson Hole, Cody and Yellowstone Deep Heritage Tour Destinations
Browse more guides: United States travel | Americas destinations Best Traditional American Wyoming Yellowstone UNESCO 1978 + 1872 First National Park: Grand Teton, Old Faithful, Jackson Hole, Cody and Yellowstone Deep Heritage Tour Destinations TL;DR Yellowstone is the place where the very idea of a national park was invented. On March 1, 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Act of Dedication that set aside 8,991 square kilometres of geyser basins, canyons and wildlife range as a public pleasuring ground, and the rest of the world copied the template. UNESCO inscribed Yellowstone on the World Heritage list in 1978, recognising both the cultural achievement and the geological scale. Roughly 96 percent of the park lies in the state of Wyoming, with thin slivers across Montana and Idaho, and the whole thing sits on top of one of the largest active volcanic systems on Earth, a caldera that measures around 64 kilometres by 32 kilometres. Above that magma chamber you get more tha...