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You're watching Inside Yellowstone.
Many people see the beautiful colors of the
Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and think they
know how the park got its name. But the park
was not named for the yellow canyon walls.
The park took its name from the river that
runs through it. The Yellowstone River neither
begins nor ends in Yellowstone National Park
but flows through park valleys and canyons for
over a hundred miles. The river moves north
from its headwaters south of the park boundary
through meadows and into Yellowstone Lake.
Unlike the many other streams that flow into
the lake however, the Yellowstone River is
the lake’s only outlet. It traverses the grass
and sagebrush-covered Hayden Valley and flows
through the 20-mile long Grand Canyon of the
Yellowstone which it carved, creating the
magnificent Upper and Lower Falls along the way.
The river also cut the Black Canyon before
exiting the park at the north boundary.
It continues north into Montana and eventually
flows into the Missouri River and the
Mississippi River and out into the Gulf of
Mexico to join the Atlantic Ocean.
At 671 miles, it remains the longest undammed
river left in the contiguous United States.
The Yellowstone River is the oldest place name
in the park and it was named by the Minnetaree
Indians hundreds of miles northeast of what is
now YNP. It was named for the color of the
sandstone bluffs near present-day Billings,
Montana rather than the altered rhyolite of the
park’s canyon walls. They called it
Mi tse a-da-zi, which was translated into
French by fur trappers and traders and
eventually to English as Yellowstone by 1797.
The Yellowstone River not only gives the park
its name but as an untamed and major waterway,
breathes life into the park, nourishing the
landscape’s plants and wildlife. And the word
Yellowstone has become almost synonymous with
the preservation of wildness and
America’s idea of national parks.