Yellowstone National Park: The Lower Loop

The tour begins at the West Yellowstone Visitor Information Center, 30 Yellowstone Avenue, a year-round building with restrooms and free Wi-Fi. It is the place to download the audio and fill the tank, since the park's…

The West Entrance Road is the park's busiest road, and this stretch lies just past the station, where Montana gives way to Wyoming. The road began in 1873 as a free alternative to the toll route at the North Entrance.…

Mountain man Jim Bridger is remembered for the wildest stories ever told about this country, and for being doubted when he told the plain truth. Ranger Boone Merrick takes up the yarns credited to him, and the questio…

The Madison River is the road's constant companion from Seven Mile Bridge to Madison Junction. Gentle hills give way here to a lava-lined canyon, with eagles and ospreys along the water and bison on the road in the co…

Generations of visitors heard that the national park idea was born beside a campfire near Madison Junction in 1870. Ranger Boone Merrick sorts through what the men of that expedition left behind, and what it cost the…

Madison Junction is the hinge of the Lower Loop, the place where the West Entrance Road ends at a T and meets the Grand Loop. The Firehole and Gibbon rivers join here to form the Madison, and the skyline carries part…

In about a quarter mile, pass the campground road, then at Madison Junction, turn right, south toward Old Faithful.

Firehole Canyon Drive is a two-mile, one-way detour that parallels the Grand Loop and rejoins it, so it adds almost nothing to the day. It passes thick lava flows, a viewing area for 40-foot Firehole Falls and a seaso…

Fountain Flat is the open grassland of the Lower Geyser Basin, kept treeless by ground too hot for lodgepole pine. The Firehole's resident elk stay here year-round, and the Fountain Hotel, known for its bears, once st…

Fountain Paint Pot is the Lower Loop's first boardwalk, an easy half-mile loop through the Lower Geyser Basin that takes most visitors 30 to 45 minutes. It packs all four of Yellowstone's major hydrothermal features i…

Grand Prismatic Spring, the country's largest hot spring, is the centerpiece of Midway Geyser Basin. The lot is on the right for southbound drivers, with vault toilets, and parking runs short between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m…

In August 1877 a party of tourists from Radersburg, Montana, set out to learn what Old Faithful would put up with. Ranger Boone Merrick follows one young woman through that carefree week and into the days after it. Th…

Old Faithful is the Lower Loop's near-certain stop, reached by a right-hand exit from the Grand Loop and a one-way road around the developed area. Three named lots serve it: Central, East and Inn. Rangers post the nex…

Old Faithful has not always been faithful. Mineralized wood on its mound suggests a long silence centuries ago, and a bathhouse pool at the Upper Basin accidentally turned a quiet spring above Geyser Hill into a geyse…

Kepler Cascades is a quick roadside look, about two and a half miles past the Old Faithful overpass on the right. A level boardwalk leads to a viewing platform, with accessible parking. The falls carry the name of a g…

Stagecoaches once carried visitors along this road in a long, slow line, which made them easy pickings. In 1914 one lone gunman noticed. Ranger Boone Merrick tells of the morning he went to work at Shoshone Point, the…

Craig Pass carries the Grand Loop over the Continental Divide at 8,262 feet, and Isa Lake sits right on top of it, a small pond with a large reputation. Its two ends once drained toward opposite oceans, one end bound…

This high stretch between the Divide crossings was once rated the worst main road in Yellowstone. It passes the Shoshone Point pullout, built for a view of Shoshone Lake with the Tetons behind it, and the scene of the…

The long descent to West Thumb was engineered for a reveal, with the first view of Yellowstone Lake held back until just before the junction. Trees may have changed the view since. West Thumb itself is a small caldera…

West Thumb Geyser Basin sits on the shore of Yellowstone Lake, just past the junction where the tour turns left toward Lake. Its boardwalk follows the water in two loops totaling 0.6 mile, so 30 to 60 minutes covers i…

In September 1870 a member of the Washburn expedition became separated from his party in the dark timber south of Yellowstone Lake. Ranger Boone Merrick tells what happened to Truman Everts over the weeks that followe…

Yellowstone Lake runs alongside this road for miles, the largest high-elevation lake in North America. Shoreline pullouts line the way, and the oddly named Hard Road to Travel picnic area has tables and a vault toilet…

For years the boats on Yellowstone Lake belonged to E.C. Waters, a concessioner with large ideas and few admirers. Ranger Boone Merrick traces his schemes, his feuds with the park and the ship that carried his name, w…

The road from Bridge Bay to Lake Village passes the Natural Bridge Trailhead, a 2.5-mile round trip that generally closes in early summer for bears, and the turnoff for the marina and campground at Bridge Bay. The Lak…

Fishing Bridge is a small development on the East Entrance Road, 0.67 mile off the Grand Loop, with a visitor center, store and gas. Anyone continuing the tour goes straight at the junction for Canyon, so the bridge i…

LeHardy Rapids is the lake's true northern end, a short stop on the right for northbound drivers, with a vault toilet. Cutthroat trout leap here in spring, and the river's rise and fall is tied to the caldera moving b…

Mud Volcano is a loop of boardwalk and pavement on the left for northbound drivers, 0.6 mile, with two steeper pitches. The National Park Service allows one to two hours, and the lower loop, which begins on the lot's…

Hayden Valley is the great open stretch between Mud Volcano and Canyon, and the Lower Loop's best bet for large animals. Its grasses grow on fine sediment left by glaciers and an ancient lake, and that is what keeps t…

For decades, one of Yellowstone's great evening attractions was a garbage dump. Ranger Boone Merrick goes back to the seats, the searchlight and the people who ran the show, and to how it all came apart in front of th…

South Rim Drive crosses the Yellowstone on Chittenden Bridge and runs out to the Upper Falls Viewpoints and Artist Point, where the road ends. It is two-way, so drivers return to the same junction and turn right. Both…

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is about 17 miles long from the Lower Falls and up to 1,150 feet deep, and much of it is surprisingly young. North Rim Drive is the natural way to see it from this direction, since…

In about a quarter mile, at Canyon Junction, turn left toward Norris. Straight goes north toward Tower.

The canyon behind this road has made careers and ended a few. Ranger Boone Merrick tells a tale of ambition and railroad money at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and of what six square feet can be worth when the…

This stretch of the Norris-Canyon Road crosses a 22-mile swath of forest flattened by wind in 1984 and burned in 1988. An exhibit tells the story of the blowdown, the fires and the famous broadcast line that gave this…

Norris Geyser Basin runs hotter than any other thermal area in Yellowstone, and it sits just outside the caldera, close to the rim and its ring fractures. Two trails serve it from the lot straight ahead at the four-wa…

Up ahead, at Norris Junction, turn left toward Madison. Straight ahead goes into the geyser basin lot, and from there Madison is a right.

The Canyon Hotel once stood above the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, the work of Robert Reamer, who also built Old Faithful Inn. Ranger Boone Merrick tells how a building that grand comes to the price in this title,…

The Gibbon River winds through open meadow on the way south from Norris, with Artists Paintpots, a steep one-mile walk, on the left and Beryl Spring's roadside pullout on the right. Bison use these meadows in the cool…

Gibbon Falls drops 84 feet over remnants of the Yellowstone Caldera rim, and it is an easy stop on the left for southbound drivers, with a walkway along the view. The sight most visitors miss is behind them: the cliff…

The loop closes at Madison Junction, 94 miles after it left. West Yellowstone is 14 miles west on the entrance road, and the road straight ahead returns to Old Faithful. The tour's last words play just before the junc…