And on the 4.533 billionth year, roughly 9 million years ago, the Teton Range began to rise. Its peaks now stretch starkly toward the sky like, well... like towers of a cathedral. It's a wondrous view to behold, especially considering its contrast to the strikingly flat lands of Jackson Hole to its immediate east....

Like so many of our National Parks, Yellowstone was created by a supervolcano. The loosely defined term 'supervolcano' is used to describe volcanic fields that produce eruptions exponentially larger in scale than those of average volcanoes. To give you some context, Yellowstone Supervolcano's first eruption produced 2,500x more....