Fountain Paint Pot Trail, located near Old Faithful, offers an easy 0.5 loop. Along this short walk you will see very good examples of most types of thermal features found in Yellowstone. These features include some very pretty hot springs, steaming fumaroles, erupting geysers and probably the best easily accessed mudpots in the park. The area is highly active and at least one geyser is usually erupting here at all times. It takes about 1/2 hour to get around this area. The parking lot is small and it can be hard to find a parking space but the sights along the trail are well worth the hassle.
After the 1959 Hebgen Lake Earthquake, Clepsydra Geyser (left) erupts almost constantly.
Yellowstone's earliest visitors were American Indians who lived in the region for thousands of years. The first Euro-American to visit Yellowstone was probably John Colter, a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. John Colter admired the western region so much he stayed in the West's mountains after the Expedition concluded in 1806. Other mountain men, who were searching Yellowstone for beaver and other pelts for trading, followed Colter. Yellowstone's first tourist, coming here not for business but just for pleasure, was Warren Angus Ferris.
Intriguing tales of Yellowstone drew more people to the untouched land. Travel was by horse or mule through forests that were often so littered with dead trees that one could only cover two to three miles in a whole day! After the area was set aside in 1872 as the nation's first national park, visitation "skyrocketed" to around 1,000 people each year. These visitors had to travel through the park on bridal paths and game trails and sleep on the ground or in tents. In 1883, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers arrived to begin proper road building, after which overnight accommodations sprang up throughout the park.
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