[Geysers] Historical note re. Fountain and Morning

[JOChapple]

Hello Geyser Gazers,

In a 1908 publication, I came across this, which must be one of the first mentions of Morning Geyser, then called New Fountain Geyser, according to Whittlesey's Yellowstone Place Names. The quote is from the Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, Vol. 40, May 1908, and is part of an article by Dr. Roland Dwight Grant.

p. 280 “Changes in the Yellowstone Park”:

            “The Fountain Geyser broke our hearts by becoming irregular in 1899. Another geyser burst out not a hundred feet away and ran a very brilliant but irregular career for a short season. But the sum total of its force was so nearly equal to that of the old Fountain in a given time, that it was easy to determine their relation, there not being sufficient force or water to run two simultaneously. The new geyser threw its triple streams farther than the old, but with smaller proportions, because its three exits were smaller. There is no doubt that a break had taken place below tin the pipe of the old geyser, and the current was firing from a smaller nozzle, and hence more brilliant.

            “Some hastened to write for the press that the Fountain Geyser would soon be extinct. Other interested parties printed it abroad that a new and glorious geyser had broken out, and wanted to give it some political name, which I think would have been fitting, because of its fickleness. Neither party was correct, as it was the same thermal force, and in 1900 I saw Fountain Geyser playing again with its old regularity and undiminished glory, as Nature’s plumbers had mended her broken pipes.”


 	The article’s concluding sentences are: “So ever go on these changes in the Park, that are no changes at all, but periods that are marked by wonderful regularity, endless variety.

	"No man can say that he has visited earth’s greatest wonder until he has made at least one complete tour of the Yellowstone National Park. It can be made with perfect ease, and for a very modest expense. It is the nearest to Nature’s heart you can possibly get.”


Janet Chapple
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