OFVEC Video Tour

Text Transcript of the Old Faithful Visitor Education Center Tour

Presenter: Sally Plumb, Exhibit Planner, Division of Interpretation

Hi, I’m Sally Plumb. Welcome to the new Old Faithful Visitor Education Center. Come on in!

Welcome in to our wonderful new lobby. As visitors enter from the geyser side, the first thing they will see on their right is our auditorium. We’ll be showing park movies there that are spaced around the geyser’s eruptions. If you want to replenish your park literature, the Yellowstone Association Bookstore, will also be open for business.

We have an entire room that will be dedicated to exhibits that will explore the hydrothermal features of Yellowstone National Park. And we have general orientation for our park visitors; not only from our ranger desk, but also on exhibits where they can help themselves.

This building has truly been a labor of love, with a lot of efforts of time and organization. On this wall, we recognize donations made to the Yellowstone Park Foundation in their 15 million dollar capital campaign fund that went toward the construction of both the building and the exhibits.

Since the early 1870’s, visitors have come to Yellowstone National Park. Today, we get more than 3 million visitors per year. This panel in the lobby area gives us a taste of some of the souvenirs of past eras, as well the words and thoughts of visitors from the past.

While you are in the lobby, you may be treated to the eruption of Old Faithful Geyser. The geyser erupts approximately every 90 minutes and the picture windows in the lobby frame the eruption beautifully.

The exhibit hall explores the hydrothermal areas of Yellowstone National Park, as well as the underlying processes and the unique ecology that exists here. So we explore a number of different themes, starting with the fact that Yellowstone is an active volcano.

The hot-spot associated with Yellowstone’s volcanic activity has been active for about 16 million years and the North American plate has drifted over it. In this interactive exhibit, visitors can move the North American plate slowly over the hot-spot until it ends-up in its present location over Yellowstone National Park.

A large number of visitors from different countries come to the Old Faithful area and so we have key exhibits translated into 4 different languages: Spanish, French, German and Japanese.

This area of the exhibit hall focuses on how geysers erupt and the different ingredients that need to come together to form a geyser. So we explore heat, water, the fracture system and earthquakes in a little more detail, so that visitors can put it all together and see how geysers form.

Beginning with heat, we take a look at some of the evidence we have that a large body of very hot molten rock underlies Yellowstone. The transfer of heat is also explored in this interactive exhibit; conduction, where heat is transferred from one solid surface to another and convection, where heat is transferred through currents.

Geysers also need water to exist. And so in this exhibit, we explore the different types of water that are found in a geyser’s system and below the geyser. Magmatic water actually doesn’t work its way into the geyser’s system, but magma does release it.

In the deepest part of the system, the water may reach temperatures far above the surface boiling point. And the water begins in Yellowstone in the form of rain and snow that circulates down through cracks and fissures in the rock, before it makes its way into a geyser’s system.

Geysers require a unique plumbing system. In this exhibit, we explore the fractures and fissures in the rock. The water makes its way down and has to work its way back up through different types of rock.

The volcanic rock that under lies the geyser basin is rhyolite, which is very rich in the mineral quartz. And when the rock emerges on the surface, after it has been dissolved by hot water, it comes in the form of sinter.

A large piece of the interior of Pork Chop Geyser was thrown out of the geyser when the geyser experienced a hydrothermal explosion. So this offers us a rare glimpse of the throat of a geyser.

Earthquakes are also a necessary ingredient to keep geysers active, because they help clear away the build-up of silica in the geyser’s system. However, earthquakes can also be a destructive force and alter or change forever the underground plumbing system of a geyser. In the Yellowstone area, we get about 2,000 earthquakes every year.

This exhibit combines all the different ingredients and shows the entire eruption process. We affectionately call this the ultimate graphic. And one of the really interesting things about this exhibit is that the sounds you are about to hear as it goes through the process were all made by a human voice.

Machine noise gets louder and deeper.

Here is a chance to explore different hydrothermal areas, both in Yellowstone National Park and in the world. The first panel explores the Upper Geyser Basin and some, though hardly all of the geysers found here. The Upper Geyser Basin has approximately 150 geysers and we are just highlighting on this panel some of the major ones.

This side of the panel highlights hydrothermal areas around the park; everywhere from Mammoth to Norris to the Upper Geyser Basin to some of the less known geyser basins, such as Shoshone.

And the third panel explores a sampling of hydrothermal areas around our planet. You can find out both the location and a little bit about the geyser. Great Geysir for instance, occurs in Iceland and is the namesake of all geysers.

Our exhibits also explore the different types of hydrothermal features that are found in the park. Many people think that we just have geysers and hot springs here. But we also have steam vents, also called fumaroles, and mudpots.

In this interactive exhibit, you have a chance to compare and contrast different types of hydrothermal features. For instance, I want to compare Oblong Geyser; it starts off with a video of the geyser erupting and then I can compare it with Castle Geyser. We ask a basic question; which of these two is a fountain geyser? And then we can compare and get in depth statistics on both geysers.

Each of the four different types of hydrothermal features is explored in depth. And those four are geysers, hot springs, steam vents and mudpots. We include a diagram on each of the different features, so visitors can understand the differences that are below ground in addition to the differences that they see above ground.

One of my favorite exhibits is in the mudpot section where you have a chance to see a video that looks like you are looking directly down into the mouth of a mudpot.

This is being filmed a week before the grand opening and we are still putting final touches on some of the exhibits, including our diorama. This will be a representation of a typical hot spring and will explore a lot of the ecology that occurs in and around the hot spring.

One theme we explore in the new visitor center is the extreme conditions that some of the plants and animals encounter around the hydrothermal areas of Yellowstone. Yellowstone has hydrothermal areas that range all the way in acidity all the way to 14 on the PH scale, with 1 being the most acidic, like battery acid.

In this exhibit we compare some of the hydrothermal features in the park with common house hold items, so that visitors get an understanding of how acidic or how alkaline our features are. As far as we know, Yellowstone doesn’t have any hydrothermal features that are more than 10 in the PH scale.

We call this exhibit a visual poem of the microbes of Yellowstone. These are images of Yellowstone’s smallest life forms that were taken through a microscope. Yellowstone’s extreme microbes have figured in some interesting scientific discoveries.

One of our exhibits explores Yellowstone’s most famous microbe, Thermus aquaticus, which revolutionized the DNA fingerprinting process. Also, our microbes occur in places that you would never think to look. And we explore some of the different areas and how they appear in different parts of the park. The microbes also figure in some uses that we might never suspect, such as salad dressings or make-up.

In this part of the exhibit hall, we explore scientific investigation that has taken place in Yellowstone’s hydrothermal areas. Rather than concentrating just on the Upper Geyser Basin, we selected four different areas scattered around Yellowstone National Park that have some pretty interest hydrothermal investigation being done.

This first exhibit focuses on Norris Geyser Basin and explores the basic question of why does Norris Geyser Basin experience some vast and dramatic changes throughout the year? And so, we give visitors a chance to explore some of the reasons that scientists have determined.

Norris Geyser Basin sits at the junction of three separate faults, which is part of the reason that it is such an unstable area. So here visitors have a chance to overlay the evidence. The first exhibit focuses on where the caldera lines are; and then we can see where faults occur in relation to the caldera lines and then see where earthquakes occur around the faults.

The next area of scientific investigation is Mammoth Hot Springs. Mammoth occurs near the northern end of the park and is different than other hydrothermal areas because there are no geysers in Mammoth and also the underlying rock is limestone rather than the volcanic rhyolite.

In this exhibit, visitors have a chance to look through a magnifying glass at the travertine that is so predominate in the Mammoth Hot Springs area and compare it with the geyserite that is commonly found around the geysers in areas such as the Upper Geyser Basin.

One scientific investigation has revealed that microorganisms figure in the formation of the Mammoth Terraces. They reveal that there are several different formations that form of the travertine being deposited, depending on the slope and the rate of water and the microorganisms that live in the various places.

So this exhibit allows you to look into different areas along a hot spring and if you could magnify them by several times, this is what you would see. The same place is magnified to 2 times and the same place is them magnified to 200 times.

Our third highlighted area of scientific investigation is the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Studies have revealed that the Grand Canyon is a cross section into a hydrothermal area. Kind of like if you could take a knife and slice through the Upper Geyser Basin, this is what you might see on the inside.

The rocks of the Grand Canyon tell an interesting story of geologic history. Here we have specimens of 2 different types of rock that are found in the park; the non-altered rock and then the rock that has been changed and altered by hydrothermal activity.

And our forth area of scientific investigation is Yellowstone Lake. A portion of the lake sits within the caldera of 640,000 years ago and scientists have revealed that the lake bottom is covered with hydrothermal vents and some interesting formations such as these spires. Researchers believe the spires are the remains of ancient hot springs and the tree-like branches there are caused by the interaction of hot water meeting with cold water. They’ve also been able to shoot footage that reveals some of the secrets of the deep, the bottom of Yellowstone Lake.

You can learn more about the hydrothermal areas of Yellowstone, their unique ecology, how geysers work and the variety of hydrothermal features that occur in Yellowstone by exploring our Virtual Visitor Center right from the comfort of your own home. Look under photos and multimedia at www.nps.gov/yell.

We have a special room, made especially for our youngest scientists and whoever else would like to engage in a lot of hands-on activities. Let’s take a look inside!

Many of the colorful bands in Yellowstone’s hot springs are actually caused by living microorganisms. And so in this exhibit, our young scientists have a chance to take temperatures, pretend temperatures in a pretend hot spring. They can move down this temperature gauge, get a reading of 110 degrees and then compare it with the panels over to the side; in this case this one, to see what might be actually living there.

The microbial mats in many of Yellowstone’s hot springs are actually composed of different layers and to help children understand that, we’ve compared the mats to an apartment building where different people live on different stories and yet they all interact with each other.

When visitors come to the Old Faithful area, of course one of the things they really want to know is-when is the geyser going to erupt? In this exhibit, we try to teach children how to predict the time of Old Faithful Geyser, which is based on the previous eruption.

We filmed 4 different times that the geyser erupted and the children can select whichever one they want and then be able to experience step-by-step instructions of how to predict the geyser eruption time. So, are you ready?

We will start the timer when we see the water start to jet out continuously; right about now. And we’ll stop the timer when we see the last small splash of water; let’s try this. We timed the eruption at 2 minutes and 17 seconds and now we have a chance to see when it actually did erupt.

Old Faithful tends to erupt every 90 minutes if the eruption lasts longer than 2 minutes and 30 seconds and every 60 minutes if it last less than 2 minutes and 30 seconds. We said 2:17, so we can check our answer. It looks like my estimate was pretty accurate, but if you were wrong or if you just want to try it again, you can start over.

We have a life size geyser model in the room. You’ll have a chance to watch the interplay of heat and water and pressure interacting together to make the geyser erupt. Meters on the geyser model measure the temperature at 205 degrees, while the boiling point here at Old Faithful is actually about 199 degrees. Old Faithful Geyser, when it erupts, is about 204 degrees. Be careful though, if you’re standing here to long, you might get splashed.

Children will have a chance to learn more about some of the animals that live around the geyser basins or that come here for food and warmth at different times of the year. This exhibit explores some of the tracks of what you might expect to see in the geyser basins. Children can also put their foot next to some of these tracks to see how they stack-up.

One of the interesting things that children will learn about is that animals that live around the hydrothermal basins year around experience tooth decay a whole lot faster than those animals that live away from hydrothermal areas. This is because the plants in hydrothermal basins tend to be coated with silica, which is like glass and additionally are high in fluoride content, which makes the teeth soft.

So here children will compare the teeth of an elk that lived away from the basins with those that lived in and look at the teeth decay.

This room is also equipped with a special gathering place just for children so that they can attend lectures here or that classroom can present videos on a special screen that faces the area or that tired parents can just wait for their children to finish enjoying the exhibits here.

While you are waiting, see if you know the answer to some of these popular Yellowstone myths. For instance, is it true that Old Faithful Geyser is the tallest geyser in the world? And the answer is, No, because Steamboat Geyser in the Norris geyser Basin is actually the tallest geyser in the world.

This building qualified for the Gold LEED level. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and is measured in the following areas: sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resource, indoor environment quality and innovation in design.

Thanks for touring the Old Faithful Visitor Education Center virtually. Come back and see us in person, because there is a lot more to see here than I was able to cover in this brief tour.