Old Faithful Geyser
| Old Faithful | |
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Eruption of Old Faithful
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| Name origin | Named by Henry D. Washburn, September 18, 1870 |
| Location | Upper Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, Teton County, Wyoming |
| Coordinates | 44°27′38″N 110°49′41″W / 44.46046°N 110.82815°WCoordinates: 44°27′38″N 110°49′41″W / 44.46046°N 110.82815°W |
| Elevation | 7,349 feet (2,240 m) |
| Type | Cone geyser |
| Eruption height | 106 feet (32 m) to 185 feet (56 m) |
| Frequency | 45 to 125 minutes |
| Duration | 3 to 10 minutes |
| Discharge | 3,700 US gallons (14 m3) to 8,400 US gallons (32 m3) |
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Old Faithful is a cone geyser located in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, United States. Old Faithful was named in 1870 during the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition and was the first geyser in the park to receive a name. It is a highly predictable geothermal feature; since 2000, it has erupted every 44 to 125 minutes. The geyser, as well as the nearby Old Faithful Inn, is part of the Old Faithful Historic District.
On the afternoon of September 18, 1870, the members of the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition traveled down the Firehole River from the Kepler Cascades and entered the Upper Geyser Basin. The first geyser they saw was Old Faithful. In his 1871 Scribner's account of the expedition, Nathaniel P. Langford wrote:
In the early days of the park, Old Faithful was often used as a laundry:
More than 1,000,000 eruptions have been recorded. Harry Woodward first described a mathematical relationship between the duration and intervals of the eruptions in 1938. Old Faithful is not the tallest or largest geyser in the park; those titles belong to the less predictable Steamboat Geyser. The reliability of Old Faithful can be attributed to the fact that it is not connected to any other thermal features of the Upper Geyser Basin.
Eruptions can shoot 3,700 to 8,400 US gallons (14,000 to 32,000 L) of boiling water to a height of 106 to 185 feet (32 to 56 m) lasting from 1.5 to 5 minutes. The average height of an eruption is 145 feet (44 m). Intervals between eruptions can range from 35 to 120 minutes, averaging 66.5 minutes in 1939, slowly increasing to an average of 90 minutes apart today, which may be the result of earthquakes affecting subterranean water levels. The disruptions have made earlier mathematical relationships inaccurate, but have actually made Old Faithful more predictable in terms of its next eruption.
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