Mount Everts, elevation , is a prominent mountain peak in

Yellowstone National Park Yellowstone National Park is an American national park located in the western United States, largely in the northwest corner of Wyoming and extending into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the 42nd U.S. Congress with the Yellowst ...

Wyoming Wyoming () is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the southwest, and Colorado to the s ...

, near

Mammoth Hot Springs Mammoth Hot Springs is a large complex of hot springs on a hill of travertine in Yellowstone National Park adjacent to Fort Yellowstone and the Mammoth Hot Springs Historic District. It was created over thousands of years as hot water from the ...

. The peak was named for Truman C. Everts, a member of the

Washburn–Langford–Doane Expedition The Washburn Expedition of 1870 explored the region of northwestern Wyoming that two years later became Yellowstone National Park. Led by Henry D. Washburn and Nathaniel P. Langford, and with a U.S. Army escort headed by Lt. Gustavus C. Doane, ...

of 1870. Mount Everts is located immediately due south of

Gardiner, Montana Gardiner is a unincorporated community in Park County, Montana, United States, along the 45th parallel. As of the 2020 census, the population of the community and nearby areas was 833. Gardiner was officially founded in 1880. The area has s ...

and due east of Mammoth Hot Springs.

History

Mount Everts was named by Henry D. Washburn shortly after the rescue of Truman C. Everts, who had been lost for 37 days in Yellowstone at the conclusion of the Washburn Expedition. During the expedition, Washburn named a peak (now called

Mount Sheridan Mount Sheridan el. is a prominent mountain peak overlooking Heart Lake in the Red Mountains of Yellowstone National Park. The peak is named in honor of General Philip H. Sheridan, U.S. Army, one of the early protectors of the park. History ...

) in the Thorofare region south of

Yellowstone Lake Yellowstone Lake is the largest body of water in Yellowstone National Park. The lake is above sea level and covers with of shoreline. While the average depth of the lake is , its greatest depth is at least . Yellowstone Lake is the largest fre ...

for Everts but later changed it to the current peak, believing it was very near the location of Everts' rescue. Everts was in fact rescued a few miles to the northeast, near where Blacktail Deer Creek enters the

Yellowstone River The Yellowstone River is a tributary of the Missouri River, approximately long, in the Western United States. Considered the principal tributary of upper Missouri, via its own tributaries it drains an area with headwaters across the mountains a ...

at the northern park boundary, and the mountain is the dominant feature separating what is now known as Gardiner from the northerly flowing Yellowstone River. Mr. Everts complained until his death that the far more grand Mount Sheridan should have been named after him.

Geology

The majority of Mt. Everts is made of

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of ...

era sediments. The Cretaceous Interior Seaway deposited sediments across North America from 120-70 million years ago. The first of these deposits in the Yellowstone region was the

Telegraph Creek Telegraph Creek is a small community located off Highway 37 in northern British Columbia at the confluence of the Stikine River and Telegraph Creek. The only permanent settlement on the Stikine River, it is home to approximately 250 members of ...

formation (100 mya) and is predominantly shale. The Eagle formation (75 mya) is dominated by sandstone and was deposited in shallower water along deltas and beaches. The Everts formation (70 mya) is dominated by sandstone and has coal seams from plant debris that collected in swampy areas. There are no rocks on Mt. Everts from 65 to 2.1 million years ago. The absence of rocks is called an unconformity. During this period few or no rocks were deposited, and erosion carried away any sediments that were deposited. The eruption of the Yellowstone hot spot 2.1 million years ago deposited the Huckleberry Ridge

tuff Tuff is a type of rock made of volcanic ash ejected from a vent during a volcanic eruption. Following ejection and deposition, the ash is lithified into a solid rock. Rock that contains greater than 75% ash is considered tuff, while rock ...

on the southern part of Mt. Everts. It is the youngest rock on the mountain. The tuff was made by multiple eruptions around 2.1 million years ago. Ash fall from the earliest part of the eruption was deposited first and can be seen as a thin strip of white rock eight feet tall. This air fall ash was so hot that it baked the sedimentary rocks it covered. The sedimentary rocks turned a darker shade of red because the heat caused red iron oxide minerals to form. Next, pyroclastic flows moved through the region, sometimes at speeds of hundreds of miles per hour, depositing the bulk of the Huckleberry Ridge tuff. The tuff was originally deposited evenly across the area when the region was lower than surrounding hills. Deposits from streams just beneath the Huckleberry Ridge tuff show that this area was at a low elevation just before the eruption. A combination of thermal bulging and erosion caused Mt. Everts to rise 1600 feet in the last 2.1 million years. This is called topographic inversion, because the lower areas become the higher areas. Thermal bulging related to the Yellowstone hot spot caused the bulk of the uplift. Erosion of surrounding areas also deepened nearby canyons because the tuff is harder, and therefore more resistant to erosion, than the other rocks.

Gallery

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Everts Mountains of Yellowstone National Park Mountains of Wyoming Mountains of Park County, Wyoming Volcanoes of Wyoming

History

Geology

Gallery

See also

Notes