Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
NOTE:
Visitors in wheelchairs should be aware that there are stairs at the point farthest from the
parking lot.
Celestine Pool
(probably from Latin
celestinus,
meaning “heavenly,” or sky blue) is the
large, quiet pool nearest the parking lot. A tragic event occurred here in 1981, when a young
man tried to rescue his dog after it jumped into the pool. Both man and dog died as a result
of contact with the scalding water.
Walking straight up the boardwalk, you come to
Silex Spring,
a large, pale blue pool that
sometimes erupts as a geyser. Silex means “silica” in Latin. Although called a spring, Silex was
known to erupt until 1979, reactivated in 2000, and continues to have periods of activity.
Fountain Paint Pot [GEO.22]
is Yellowstone's largest easily accessible mud pot. These oc-
cur in areas of limited water supply, where gas bubbles of
carbon dioxide
and rotten-egg-
smelling
hydrogen sulfide
rise and, helped by bacteria, form acids that break down the tephra
into fine clay and silica. The
paint pot
is delicately tinted by oxides of iron, nickel, aluminum,
and manganese. The fascinating bubbling activity depends upon the amount of groundwa-
ter available, usually decreasing as summer progresses. The boardwalk sometimes has to be
moved as the paint pot grows.
A nineteenth-century visitor, Gen. John Gibbon, remarked that the paint pots are like “a
group of politicians, each one trying to outdo the other”—and he said something about mud-
slinging in the same connection.
At the top of the hill, you can often hear a loud, high-pitched, and persistent hissing sound
coming from a jumble of rocks next to bubbling mud. This is a fumarole, a vent where steam
and other gases escape from deep underground.
