Midway Geyser Basin Excelsior crater
— — a crater that once threw three hundred feet of sky.
Not only on a wall.
“A blue-floored crater two hundred by three hundred feet across, set into the bank of the Firehole River. Excelsior used to be the largest active geyser in the world. After a few enormous eruptions in the 1880s it broke its own plumbing and went quiet. It still pours four thousand gallons a minute of near-boiling water into the river, steam carrying for half a mile on cold mornings.
Midway Geyser Basin Excelsior crater, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Excelsior Crater sits in the Midway Geyser Basin along the Firehole River, on Yellowstone's Lower Grand Loop between Old Faithful and Madison Junction. The crater is roughly 200 by 300 feet, the largest single feature in the basin, and shares a short boardwalk with Grand Prismatic Spring just upslope. Excelsior was once the world's largest active geyser, recorded throwing columns up to 300 feet high in the 1880s. Major eruptions in 1881 and 1890 fractured the underground channels, and the feature has functioned as a hot spring rather than a geyser ever since.
The crater discharges roughly 4,000 gallons of near-boiling water per minute directly into the Firehole River, raising the river temperature for several hundred yards downstream. The water leaves the crater across a wide apron of orange and rust-coloured thermophilic mats, which take their colour from heat-loving bacteria living at narrow temperature bands. The blue of the pool itself comes from clarity and depth, the same physics that colours the central eye of Grand Prismatic Spring just uphill.
The Midway Geyser Basin boardwalk is a half-mile loop from the parking area on Grand Loop Road, six miles north of Old Faithful. The walk crosses the Firehole River on a steel bridge and passes Excelsior first, then Grand Prismatic. The basin is open through the summer season but the parking lot fills before nine on most days; off-season access from November to April is by snowcoach or guided ski from the south or west entrances. Stay on the boardwalk; the crust around the crater is thin.