The Geologic Story of Yellowstone National Park

The Geologic Story of Yellowstone National Park is a book by William R. Keefer. The book describes itself as a review of the geologic processes and events responsible for the spectacular natural wonders of the Yellowstone country, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the oldest and largest of our national parks. A quoted passage describes a country smoking with vapor from boiling springs and burning with gases issuing from small craters.

One caption says the area overlying the blown-out part of the magma chamber collapsed to form a gigantic caldera, the collapse taking place mostly along normal faults that developed from the fractures in the ring fracture zone. A caption says the Yellowstone tuff, an ash-flow tuff, covered most of Yellowstone National Park about 600,000 years ago, and that the tuff was erupted explosively from the ring fracture zones of the Yellowstone caldera. A passage on an earthquake says the quake caused only slight damage to buildings at Old Faithful, Mammoth Hot Springs, and a few other places.