So, you type "Yellowstone Natl Park" into your search engine. What comes up? Information on one of the most beautiful natural regions in the United States. A Yellowstone National Park map will show you that the park covers portions of three states: Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. As the first and the oldest national park in the world, Yellowstone covers 3,470 square miles filled with unique and breathtaking natural formations.

With free-ranging herds of buffalo and elk, wolves, grizzly bears, and geothermal features like geysers and hot springs, Yellowstone is a land alive. Known to the Native Americans as Mitzi-a-dazi, Yellowstone was visited by the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1806. One of the most famous exploratory expeditions to the area was led by Jim Bridger in 1857. As early as 1870 efforts were underway to protect the Yellowstone region, efforts that came to fruition in 1872 when President Ulysses S. Grant signed the bill to create Yellowstone National Park.

There are eleven locations to stay inside Yellowstone National Park. Lodging facilities include Old Faithful Inn, Old Faithful Lodge Cabins, Old Faithful Snowlodge, Lake Yellowstone Hotel, Lake Lodge Cabins, Grant Village Lodge, Canyon Village Lodge and Cabins, Roosevelt Lodge Cabins, and the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel and Cabins.

Be aware that most Yellowstone National Park lodging is open from mid-May or June to August or sometime into October. The facilities fill rapidly. It is wise to make your reservation well in advance and it may even be best to seek the aid of a travel agent when looking for Yellowstone National Park lodging inside the park itself.

If you do not want to stay inside the park, Yellowstone National Park lodging can be secured in any of the following communities: Belgrade, Montana; Livingston, Montana; Cody, Wyoming; Moran, Wyoming; Gardiner, Montana; Silver Gate, Montana; Jackson Hole, Wyoming; or West Yellowstone, Montana. Look at a Yellowstone National Park map to select the site best suited to your travel plans.

In 1988 when massive wildfires broke out inside Yellowstone the controversial decision was made to allow them to burn with firefighters only protecting man-made structures. The argument that fire is a natural part of the Yellowstone ecosystem was not popular with the public, but the fires burned off and on until they were extinguished by the fall rains.

In the wake of the fires, old park vistas that had become overgrown are once again viewable, new sapling growth is visible throughout the burned regions, and heretofore unknown geological and archaeological sites were discovered. Painful as it was to make the decision to allow the fires to move through the gorgeous landscape destroying 45% of the forest, Yellowstone, true to form, simply had new lessons to teach its custodians and visitors.

As the most popular of the national parks in the United States, hundreds of thousands of visitors tour the landscape on an annual basis. The decision to preserve and nurture this beautiful landscape may be one of the best political decisions ever reached by a president of the United States. So what do you get when you search for "Yellowstone Natl Park?" Information on an American treasure.