More visitors for Yellowstone by Ioana Madalina Tantareanu

Yellowstone Park saw an amazing increase of visitors this year with nearly 1.8 million tourists from January through July. Comparing with the 1.6 million people that visited the park last year in the same period, we can easily notice an increase in visits of 9.8%. Park officials say more than 808,000 people visited the park this July, which means an increase of 9.4% in visits compared to the 738,000 people who came to Yellowstone in July 2006. The park's East Entrance seems to record the biggest increase of visitors - about 31%. Park officials think this is due to the fact that the entrance is no longer blocked by construction works at night. Yellowstone National Park became the world's first national park on March 1, 1872. Located mostly in the U.S. state of Wyoming, the park that extends also into Montana and Idaho, is known for its wildlife and geothermal features, with Old Faithful Geyser being one of them. Yellowstone is the centerpiece of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the largest remaining, nearly-intact ecosystem in the Earth's northern temperate zone. Native Americans have lived in the region for at least 11,000 years. The region was bypassed during the Lewis and Clark Expedition in the early 1800s, and aside from visits by mountain men during the early to mid-1800s, organized exploration did not begin until the late 1860s.

by Ioana Madalina Tantareanu for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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