yellowstone
a nature paradise

Messages
from within
Mother Earth

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The Soda Butte and other small wonders

Soda Butte on NE Entrance Road the Soda Butte a dried up hotspring Soda Butte close up bison surprise bison behind the butte
Somewhere on the NE Entrance Road stands out a small conical hillock with the funny name 'Soda Butte'. There used to be a hotspring here, now only producing some hot water and 'rotten eggs gas' (H2S), that build this mound of travertine. More than a century ago, it bubbled and steamed and grew into this butte. Then the steam and sulfur found another way out of the earth...
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Mammoth Hotspring Terraces

At the entry of Mammoth village, there is a white mountain. It is so white (with also some brownish parts) that you wonder what material it is made of. Well, it's travertine, a kind of limestone, made from the calcium and bicarbonate that come to the surface with the hot water from the spring. The Terraces were first described by the Hayden Survey in 1871 as White Mountain Hotspring.
Fresh travestine is white, but algae and cyanobacteria may give it bright colours.

Hotspring terraces at Mammoth this stuff is really white! Tourists at the White Mountains it makes a really weird lndscape water streamig from the White Mountains

There is also a strange hillock, Liberty Cap (a reference to the cap worn by partisans of independence during the American Revolution). The cone was made by a hotspring that put layer on layer of travertine, much like a stalagmite in a limestone grotto. The hotspring found another outlet, so the spring is now inactive.

Liberty Cap Liberty Cap Liberty Cap seen from the other side

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