Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Norris Geyser Basin*
Give yourself a few hours at Norris Geyser Basin for a walk through a thermal area very dif-
ferent from all the others in the park. A ranger-interpreter is often roving in Norris Geyser
Basin during daylight hours, and it's always worthwhile for a visitor to go along with him or
her to learn what's currently interesting in the basin. The features at Norris change so rapidly
that only someone on the spot almost daily can keep up.
The short Norris Geyser Basin side road goes directly west from Norris Junc-
tion. At road's end, you'll find restrooms and cold drink machines—very welcome on a hot
summer day. There are no restaurants, hotels, or grocery stores near this area.
Down a short walkway from the parking lots are a small bookstore and the
Norris Mu-
seum,
built in 1930 and now a National Historic Landmark. Inside the museum, you'll find
displays about Yellowstone's and other regions' hydrothermal areas. A pamphlet about Nor-
ris's trails and features is available from a dispensing box near the museum. Read the precau-
tions for a safe and pleasant geyser basin walk in the Travel Tips and in the Upper Geyser
Basin section.
What's at Norris Geyser Basin?
About 50 of the most easily seen and interesting hot springs, geysers, and mud pots are men-
tioned in this guidebook. Some may be insignificant features but have such irresistible names
they beg to be listed. here are actually over 180 features here, according to geyser enthusiast
Rocco Paperiello's
Report on the Norris Geyser Basin for 1984.
No guidebook can keep up to
date with the constantly changing features of this basin.
Two sometimes-steaming springs greet you before you even start on the basin walkways.
To the east of the museum is rarely erupting Harding Geyser, named when it first erupted in
1923 for President Warren G. Harding, who visited the park that year only a month before he
died.
Behind the bookstore is the site of Steamvalve Spring. Have you wondered while visiting
the park how engineers have managed to avoid placing roads and buildings in the path of
hydrothermal activity? Steamvalve Spring is an example of a place they misjudged. Here a
seemingly dead mud hole—now covered with downed lodgepoles—has been filled with as-
phalt twice, only to come bursting through with renewed activity, erupting frequently with
extraordinary rumbling noises. No more asphalt has been applied!
