Shoshone Geyser Basin

This backcountry geyser basin is easily reached by a 5 mi round-trip hike that follows an old, now-closed road from the trail-head south of Old Faithful. Lone Star Geyser erupts about every three hours. There is a logbook, in a cache near the geyser, for observations of geyser times and types of eruptions. Bicycles can make it most of the way to Lone Star.

This lake is the park's second largest lake and is at the head of the Lewis River southwest of West Thumb. Shoshone Lake is 205 ft at its maximum depth and has an area of 8050 acre. Shoshone Lake used to be barren of fish owing to waterfalls on the Lewis River, but today the lake contains introduced lake trout, brown trout, and Utah chubs. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service believes that Shoshone Lake may be the largest lake in the lower 48 states that cannot be reached by road. No motorboats are allowed on the lake.

This is the most easily reached waterfall in the district. A marked pullout just south of Old Faithful and a short walk from the car offers the visitor easy access to view this 125 ft cascade.

This lake is on the Continental Divide at Craig Pass in 1891. Isa Lake is noteworthy as probably the only lake on earth that drains naturally to two oceans backwards, the east side draining to the Pacific and the west side to the Atlantic.

Built during the winter of 1903-04, the Old Faithful Inn is one of the few remaining log hotels in the United States. It is a masterpiece of rustic architecture in its stylized design and fine craftsmanship. Its influence on American architecture, particularly park architecture, was immeasurable. The building is a rustic log and wood-frame structure with gigantic proportions: nearly 700 ft in length and seven stories high. The lobby of the hotel features a 65 ft ceiling, a massive rhyolite fireplace, and railings made of contorted lodgepole pine. Visitors can stand in the middle of the lobby and look up at the exposed structure, or climb up a gnarled log staircase to one of the balconies and look up, down, or across. Wings were added to the hotel in 1915 and 1927, and today there are 327 rooms available to guests in this National Historic Landmark.

Built in 1897, this is the oldest structure in the Old Faithful area still in use. The "knotty pine" porch is a popular resting place for visitors, providing a great view of Geyser Hill. (The oldest building at Old Faithful was built as a photo studio in 1897 for F. Jay Haynes. It used to be 700 ft southwest of Beehive Geyser and about 350 ft northwest of the front of the Old Faithful Inn, but it now stands near the intersection of the Grand Loop Road and the fire lane, near the crosswalk.).