The hot springs and the mineral deposits of Wagon Wheel Gap, Colorado

It was the busy summer season in Yellowstone National Park, a beautiful moonlit night with 18,000 people in the park’s campgrounds and hotels and thousands more in surrounding towns and recreation areas. At 23 minutes before midnight, a talent contest was wrapping up at the Old Faithful recreation hall. A beauty queen had just been crowned. As she walked down the aisle to the applause of several hundred people, the log building creaked loudly and began to shake. Within seconds, the earthquake sent people scurrying for the exits. A park ranger dropped the hand of his date—a waitress from Old Faithful Inn—and rushed to open the doors so no one would be trampled. Nearby, frightened guests fled Old Faithful Inn, where a waterline broke and an old stone chimney soon would collapse into a dining room, thankfully closed at that late hour. Out in the darkness, in geyser basins along Yellowstone’s Firehole River, the Earth began belching larger-than-usual volumes of hot water. About 160 geysers erupted, some for the first time, others after decades-long dormant periods. Sapphire Pool, once a gentle spring, became a violent geyser, hurling mineral deposits around Biscuit Basin. Clepsydra, Fountain, and some other geysers in Lower Geyser Basin began erupting more often than usual. Old Faithful’s eruptions became less frequent, although some observers thought it spouted with unusual vigor earlier that evening. Hundreds of hot springs became muddy. Fountain Paint Pot spewed mud violently, spattering tourist walkways. Rocks and landslides tumbled into park highways in several places, blocking roads between Old Faithful and Mammoth and closing the route to the park’s west entrance at West Yellowstone, Montana. Within an hour, thousands of vehicles streamed out of Yellowstone on roads that remained open—a serpentine parade of headlights fleeing the strongest earthquake yet recorded in the Rocky Mountains and the Intermountain West. The panic and damage in Yellowstone were minimal compared with the unimaginable horror that would overtake a popular Montana recreation area just outside the park’s northwest boundary.

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Ore and mineral deposits

AccessScience ◽

10.1036/1097-8542.474800 ◽

2015 ◽

Keyword(s):

Mineral Deposits

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Keyes' Improved Wagon Wheel

Scientific American ◽

10.1038/scientificamerican05071870-302a ◽

1870 ◽

Vol 22 (19) ◽

pp. 302-302

Keyword(s):

Wagon Wheel

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The Hot Springs Conference

Far Eastern Survey ◽

10.1525/as.1945.14.2.01p15332 ◽

1945 ◽

Vol 14 (2) ◽

pp. 16-22

Author(s):

William C. Johnstone

Keyword(s):

Hot Springs

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Vickers Hot Springs

Case Studies in the Environment ◽

10.1525/cse.2017.sc.368314 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 1-6

Author(s):

Jennifer M. Bernstein

Keyword(s):

Common Good ◽

Common Property ◽

Hot Springs ◽

Public Access ◽

Common Property Resource ◽

Resource Conflict ◽

Social Ecological ◽

The Commons ◽

Local Residents ◽

The Common

Vickers Hot Springs is located near the rural Southern California town of Ojai, and local residents have long enjoyed soaking in the sulfuric pools. But as knowledge of the springs spread, the area saw increases in fights, traffic, burglaries, and drug use. In response, two residents purchased the land and committed to restore the property while allowing limited public access, subsequently generating a great deal of controversy within the community. Privatizing Vickers Hot Springs follows the archetypical lesson of Garrett Hardin's 1968 essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Hardin stated that the problem for common-pool resources was that a finite amount of services are demanded by a potentially infinite number of users, who have little to gain by sacrificing for the common good. But Hardin's theory does not always apply. Many communities have come together to manage resources, often without government oversight. Thus, the question is not whether or not Hardin's theory is accurate, but rather “under what conditions it is correct and when it makes the wrong predictions.” Case studies provide nuance to the broad brushstrokes of a theory, and whether Hardin's parable is applicable depends on the particularities of the common property resource conflict. Employing the frameworks established by Hardin, Dietz et al., and Ostrom, this paper examines the management of Vickers Hot Springs within its broader social, ecological, and political context, asking whether the particular circumstances of this resource use conflict made privatization the most predictable outcome.

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Algal Extremophile Community Persistence from Hot Springs National Park (Arkansas, U.S.A.)

International Journal on Algae ◽

10.1615/interjalgae.v15.i1.50 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 15 (1) ◽

pp. 65-76 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Th. E. Smith ◽

K. Manoylov ◽

A. Packard

Keyword(s):

National Park ◽

Hot Springs ◽

Community Persistence

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