Yellowstone National Park is a national park located in the western United States, largely in the northwest corner of Wyoming and extending into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the 42nd U.S. Congress with the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. Yellowstone was the first national park in the U.S. and is also widely held to be the first national park in the world. The park is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features, especially the Old Faithful geyser, one of its most popular. While it represents many types of biomes, the subalpine forest is the most abundant. It is part of the South Central Rockies forests ecoregion.
Park County is a county in the U.S. state of Montana. At the 2020 census, the population was 17,191. Its county seat is Livingston. A small part of Yellowstone National Park is in the southern part of the county.
Belfry is a census-designated place (CDP) in Carbon County, Montana, United States. It is part of the Billings, Montana Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 218 at the 2010 census. It is located approximately 11 miles (18 km) from the Wyoming border, roughly halfway between Billings, Montana and Cody, Wyoming.
Livingston is a city and county seat of Park County, Montana, United States. It is in southwestern Montana, on the Yellowstone River, north of Yellowstone National Park. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 8,040.
Laurel is a city in Yellowstone County, Montana, United States. It is the third largest community in the Billings Metropolitan Statistical Area, and is located in the Yellowstone Valley, as an east–west terminal division point of the BNSF Railway. The population was 7,222 at the 2020 census.
The geothermal areas of Yellowstone include several geyser basins in Yellowstone National Park as well as other geothermal features such as hot springs, mud pots, and fumaroles. The number of thermal features in Yellowstone is estimated at 10,000. A study that was completed in 2011 found that a total of 1,283 geysers have erupted in Yellowstone, 465 of which are active during an average year. These are distributed among nine geyser basins, with a few geysers found in smaller thermal areas throughout the Park. The number of geysers in each geyser basin are as follows: Upper Geyser Basin (410), Midway Geyser Basin (59), Lower Geyser Basin (283), Norris Geyser Basin (193), West Thumb Geyser Basin (84), Gibbon Geyser Basin (24), Lone Star Geyser Basin (21), Shoshone Geyser Basin (107), Heart Lake Geyser Basin (69), other areas (33). Although famous large geysers like Old Faithful are part of the total, most of Yellowstone's geysers are small, erupting to only a foot or two. The hydrothermal system that supplies the geysers with hot water sits within an ancient active caldera. Many of the thermal features in Yellowstone build up sinter, geyserite, or travertine deposits around and within them.
The Yellowstone River is a tributary of the Missouri River, approximately 692 miles (1,114 km) long, in the Western United States. Considered the principal tributary of upper Missouri, via its own tributaries it drains an area with headwaters across the mountains and high plains of southern Montana and northern Wyoming, and stretching east from the Rocky Mountains in the vicinity of Yellowstone National Park. It flows northeast to its confluence with the Missouri River on the North Dakota side of the border, about 25 miles west of present-day Williston.
The Gallatin River is a tributary of the Missouri River, approximately 120 mi (193 km) long, in the U.S. states of Wyoming and Montana. It is one of three rivers, along with the Jefferson and Madison, that converge near Three Forks, Montana, to form the Missouri.
Montana Rail Link was a privately held Class II railroad in the United States. It operated on trackage originally built by the Northern Pacific Railway and leased from its successor BNSF Railway. MRL was a unit of The Washington Companies and was headquartered in Missoula, Montana.
On the evening of 4 December 1957, two trains crashed in dense fog on the South Eastern Main Line near Lewisham in south-east London, causing the deaths of 90 people and injuring 173. An electric train to Hayes had stopped at a signal under the bridge, and the following steam train to Ramsgate crashed into it, destroying a carriage and causing the bridge to collapse onto the steam train. The bridge had to be completely removed; it was over a week before the lines under the bridge were reopened, and another month before the bridge was rebuilt and traffic allowed over it.
The 1959 Hebgen Lake earthquake occurred in the western United States on August 17 at 11:37 pm (MST) in southwestern Montana.
The Bridger Trail, also known as the Bridger Road and Bridger Immigrant Road, was an overland route connecting the Oregon Trail to the gold fields of Montana. Gold was discovered in Virginia City, Montana in 1863, prompting settlers and prospectors to find a trail to travel from central Wyoming to Montana. In 1863, John Bozeman and John Jacobs scouted the Bozeman Trail, which was a direct route to the Montana gold fields through the Powder River Country. At the time the region was controlled by the Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho, who stepped up their raids in response to the stream of settlers along the trail.
The Carlin Tunnel is a collective name for a set of four tunnel bores in the Humboldt River's Carlin Canyon, east of Carlin in Elko County, Nevada, United States. The two railroad bores were constructed for different purposes at different times, while the two highway bores were constructed concurrently, all with the goal of bypassing a sharp bend in the river. Currently, two of the bores carry Interstate 80, while the other two bores carry Union Pacific Railroad's Overland Route and Central Corridor. Bridges over the Humboldt River are adjacent to both portals of three tubes, including the two freeway bores and one of the railroad bores.
The Custer Creek train wreck is the worst rail disaster in Montana history. It occurred on June 19, 1938 when a bridge, its foundations washed away by a flash flood, collapsed beneath Milwaukee Road's Olympian as it crossed Custer Creek, near Saugus, Montana, south-west of Terry, killing at least 47 people.
The 2015 Mount Carbon train derailment refers to a derailment in Mount Carbon, West Virginia, on February 16, 2015, which involved a CSX Transportation train hauling 107 tank cars of crude oil from North Dakota to Virginia. It resulted in a large oil spill that caught fire with several subsequent large, violent fireball eruptions. The spill, fire, and eruptions destroyed one home, forced the evacuation of hundreds of families and caused the temporary shut down of two nearby water treatment plants. Eventually, 19 railcars carrying crude oil caught fire with each car carrying up to 30,000 US gallons of crude oil.
The Forsyth Bridge across the Yellowstone River in Forsyth, Montana is a Pennsylvania truss bridge which was built in 1905. It has also been known as Yellowstone River Bridge. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.
In June 2022, the U.S. state of Montana was hit by heavy, damaging floods in multiple major watersheds including the Yellowstone River. Heavy rain and melting snow over the weekend June 10–13 caused large areas of Yellowstone National Park to be evacuated. On June 14, the water plant in Billings was temporarily shut down. Many houses were damaged as a result, and a number of roads and bridges were destroyed by floodwaters.
At 4:25 pm on July 8, 1986, a 44 car Baltimore and Ohio railroad freight train, traveling at 45 miles per hour, bound south to Cincinnati, derailed near Miamisburg, Ohio, a small city with an industrial history in Montgomery County, southwest of Dayton. Fifteen of the cars derailed on a bridge; these were tank cars containing yellow phosphorus, molten sulfur and tallow. Carrying a chemical used to make rat poison, fireworks and luminescent coatings, one tank car caught fire. This resulted in emission of an estimated 1,000 foot (300 m) high cloud of phosphorus. A subsequent incident caused the largest train accident-triggered evacuation at the time in the United States. The accident was the second major rail disaster in Miamisburg within an eight-year period. On September 10, 1978, 15 cars of a Conrail train derailed.
