Taken at the Midway Geyser Basin, water in excess of 180° was bubbling up in this thermal feature. Rudyard Kipling visited the park in 1889 and famously called this basin, “Hell’s Half Acre.”
Excelsior Geyser is in the basin and used to be the world’s largest with 300+ foot eruptions in the 1880s. Geologists believe the violent eruptions damaged its inner workings and since then activity has been greatly diminished.
