The Gardiner Cañon is a precipitous valley of loose gray walls suggestive of danger from falling rocks. The nests of fish-hawks here and there crown detached pinnacles. The most striking feature of the cañon is the river, a typical mountain torrent of such rapid fall over its rocky bed that it is a continuous succession of foaming cascades.
Some four miles up the river, at the point where the road leaves it, the tourist gets his first sight of any indication of subterranean heat. This is a large stream of hot water, in early times called the Boiling River, issuing from an opening in the rocks and emptying directly into the river. It is formed of the collected waters of Mammoth Hot Springs which find their way to this point through underground passages. It was here that “numbers of invalids” were encamped when Hayden and Barlow saw the spot in 1871.
From the last crossing of the Gardiner a winding road, which rises 600 feet in its length of one mile, brings the tourist to the world-renowned Mammoth Hot Springs, and to the administrative and business headquarters of the Park.
Terry Engr. Co.
U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories.
Mammoth Hot Springs.
Bunsen Peak in the distance.
U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories.
Pulpit Terrace.