<div>I have throughly enjoyed all the reflections and points of interest expressed by all about our beloved geysers! </div> <div> </div> <div>My two cents: They float my boat!! </div> <div> </div> <div>Carol Beverly </div> <div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 8:12 AM, <<a href="mailto:Lee_Whittlesey@nps.gov">Lee_Whittlesey@nps.gov</a>> wrote: <blockquote style="BORDER-LEFT:#ccc 1px solid;MARGIN:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;PADDING-LEFT:1ex" class="gmail_quote"> Why study geysers in general and Fan/Mortar in particular? To Carlton’s, Paul Strasser’s, and Jeff Cross’s well thought out responses about prediction of the next eruption, I want to put in my two cents. Since I completed WONDERLAND NOMENCLATURE in 1988 with its long geyser history, I’ve been amazed at how much more I’ve found. I’ve added hundreds of long, flowery, and often poetic descriptions of geyser activity, many from newspapers, and some day, if I live long enough, I’ll publish them all, because they are all part of that data that Carlton Cross mentions. To me those accounts point to the fact that there is no place on earth that is like Yellowstone and so in my estimation every scrap of its history should be preserved, especially where that history is, as here, very unusual and often unique. To Carlton’s response about “no predictive value for ten or twenty years from now,” I would add that a few geysers have shown remarkable stability over time and the historic patterns that earlier observers recorded are still usable by us today, so it is valuable to know that. And even where thermal features have changed a great deal through time, our recording of their activity and evaluating that history may yet give us a clue toward predicting the next eruption, a result that Strasser reminds us is a “bottom line” and a result that Carlton reminds us is only possible if we HAVE the data because otherwise we won’t notice the correlations. These points are all relevant but I think there is an overarching point here, and it is that geyser study is a fascinating adjunct to the larger history of TOURISM…in the West, in America as a whole, and in the world. In that important realm (which is now becoming greatly studied by historians), Yellowstone is a central part, because it was the first incentive for tourism in the interior of the American West following the Civil War. Geysers were and are a big part of that. Geysers are extremely unusual natural features that attract discussion and ultimately tourism, and visitors have been fascinated by them since earliest days. And, too, they were the original reason for the establishment of Yellowstone National Park (not the animals or canyons or lakes or waterfalls, as many people wrongly believe). Those early visitors did not care about volcanism-over-millennia; they cared about the immediate geyser-show and the stories that got created because of it. As Jeff Cross reminded us, because the eruptions of the larger geysers are spectacular, they are worth the wait. This fascination for geysers by tourists is evidenced by the hundreds of accounts we have of their activity. And as many have mentioned, no other place else on earth has that (at least in this magnitude), and so that fact alone makes the geyser history worth recording. Finally, Tara Cross has put the frosting on the cake by reminding us about what makes tour guides tick, and we should remember that tour guides are an essential part of that tourism now being so studied by historians. I love her comment: “[Geysers] give me great joy. I would like others to experience that too.” That is the essence of a tour guide—someone who loves showing things to people. And I would argue that it is the essence of tourism itself. _______________________________________________ Geysers mailing list <a href="mailto:Geysers@lists.wallawalla.edu">Geysers@lists.wallawalla.edu</a> <a href="https://lists.wallawalla.edu/mailman/listinfo/geysers" target="_blank">https://lists.wallawalla.edu/mailman/listinfo/geysers</a></blockquote> </div>