Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

In the summer of 1871 the painter Thomas Moran rode into Yellowstone with Ferdinand Hayden's government survey. Working alongside the photographer William Henry Jackson, he spent about forty days sketching geysers, hot springs and this canyon. Their pictures reached Congress, and in March 1872 Yellowstone became the first national park. That same year Congress paid Moran $10,000 for The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, a canvas seven feet by twelve, and hung it in the Capitol. He later signed his work TYM, for Thomas Yellowstone Moran.

The canyon is 800 to 1,200 feet deep. Its walls are rhyolite, volcanic rock cooked and softened by ancient hot springs, and the yellows come mostly from iron in the rock rather than sulfur. Park geologists put it simply: the canyon is rusting. The name Yellowstone comes from somewhere else entirely, a Hidatsa name for yellow sandstone bluffs far downstream.

The Lower Falls drops 308 feet, nearly twice the height of Niagara.

Here the falls pour down the center of the picture, throwing up a column of mist, and the river runs out toward the viewer between pale gold and rose walls. Dark pines cling to the slopes on either side, and the forested plateau stretches away under a soft, cloud-filled sky.