Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
9.7/10.9
(2)
Unmarked lake access road at
Spruce Point.
10.8/9.8 (4)
Exhibit picnic area with an interpretive sign about the forests. Blue-green En-
gelmann spruce and subalpine fir trees can be found along with lodgepole pines in the moister
environment near the lake. For hints about identifying these trees, see the Living Things
chapter.
Visible out to the east in the lake are
Dot
and
Frank Islands.
Boat operator E. C. Waters
kept bison and elk penned on Dot Island in the early 1900s. It was a sort of zoo for the tourists
who traveled between West Thumb and Lake Hotel on his boat, the
Zillah.
The hull of this
boat is probably the one seen by divers in 1994 about 200 yards (180 m) out from Lake Hotel.
Yellowstone Lake
No writer has better described Yellowstone Lake than did renowned naturalist John Muir
in an
Atlantic Monthly
article of 1898:
It is about twenty miles long and fifteen wide, and lies at a height of nearly 8,000 feet above the
level of the sea, amid dense black forests and snowy mountains. Around its winding, wavering
shores, closely forested and picturesquely varied with promontories and bays, the distance is
more than 100 miles….
It is full of trout, and a vast multitude of birds—swans, pelicans, geese, ducks, cranes, herons,
curlews, plovers, snipe—feed in it and upon its shores; and many forest animals come out of the
woods, and wade a little way in shallow, sandy places to drink and look about them, and cool
themselves in the free flowing breezes.
In calm weather it is a magnificent mirror for the woods and mountains and sky, now pattered
with hail and rain, now roughened with sudden storms that send waves to fringe the shores and
wash its border of gravel and sand.
Yellowstone Lake is North America's largest high altitude lake (7,732 ft / 2,357 m) at
about 14 by 20 miles (23 by 32 km) in width and length and with more than 141 miles (227
km) of shoreline. The lake has an average depth of 139 feet (42 m); its deepest spot is 430
feet (131 m) just east of Stevenson Island.
Tributaries
Approximately 125 tributary streams feed into Yellowstone Lake, mostly from the south
and east. One of the streams is the Yellowstone River's source, which enters the southeast
arm of the lake from the mountains in Bridger-Teton National Forest. Thus, the lake's out-
let at Fishing Bridge is not really the headwaters of the Yellowstone River.
