One of the defining aspects of Yellowstone National Park is how it adapts to change. That can be natural, such as a forest fire or a 500-year flood, or artificial, such as the impacts of millions of tourists visiting every year.
Morning Glory Pool is now one of the lesser-known thermal pools in the Upper Geyser Basin near Old Faithful. Like an aging bison or a 1960s rock star, it’s not what it used to be, but it stands as a cautionary monument of how people can upset the delicate balance of Yellowstone’s unique ecosystem.
That’s because Morning Glory used to be unique, a brilliant crystal-clear blue that seemed to be bottomless. Then it was “discovered.”
On the road to the famous Old Faithful, Morning Glory for decades became a stop for visitors, who treated it like a wishing well, throwing coins, trash and anything else they wanted to discard into it.
Now it resembles many of the other prismatic pools in the park with rainbows of colors.
But it’s no longer crystal clear or pure blue.
Wishing Wells
In the early days of Yellowstone National Park, Morning Glory was a big draw. Its name came from its original and long-lost color, recorded by early visitors and National Park Service photos as a deep shade of blue.
“There are some lovely quotes about its beauty and stunning blue colors, and likening it to the Morning Glory flower,” said Yellowstone National Park historian Alica Murphy.
However, its beauty evoked another reaction in many visitors — a desire to throw something into it.
The geysers and pools of Yellowstone were filled with coins, handkerchiefs and other objects from the park’s visitors a century ago.
The concept of Yellowstone and the national parks as conservation bastions hadn’t manifested then. Murphy said many people treated the park’s thermal pools as colorful “wishing wells.”
“I think many people like to throw things into pools,” she said. “Wishing wells are a time-honored tradition. Flip a coin into a wishing well and make a wish. There is something about a pool of water that gives humans a weird instinct to throw things into it.”
Clearing And Cleaning
Former Yellowstone ranger Jeff Henry first visited the park when he was 6 months old. He went on to spend decades working in the park doing everything from concessions to operating heavy equipment and will soon begin his 46th year as one of the park’s winter caretakers.
“I wanted to work at a lot of different jobs so I could expose myself to a lot of different areas and subjects in Yellowstone,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “For better or for worse, that’s what I’ve done, and I’ve been incredibly lucky.”
One of the many incredible things he’s done in his lifetime in Yellowstone was an undertaking that probably won’t ever happen again. In 1991, Henry was part of a team that cleaned out Morning Glory Pool.
Henry said the National Park Service routinely organized the cleaning of thermal pools in that era, hoping to restore some of their natural beauty by removing the stuff people threw into them. He can’t imagine that happening today, given the intensity and resources needed to accomplish the tasks.
“We used a couple of fire trucks to pump down the pool's water level and shoot it into the Firehole River,” he said. “A guy was hooked up to a climbing harness so that he wouldn't fall into the pool, and he was out there with a long-handled net, fishing things out of the water far down into the crater of the pool.”
Henry and several others carefully fished hundreds of objects from the bottom of the Morning Glory Pool. It was a laborious process, both to ensure they didn’t damage the delicate thermal feature and didn’t risk the safety of anyone involved.
“I remember joking about how we were practicing scald and release fishing that day,” he said.
Morning Glory Pool used to be clear blue in color, but its close proximity to the road leading to Old Faithful has meant tourists throwing so much trash into it that it lost its original color. (National Park Service) 
Morning Glory Pool used to be clear blue in color, but its close proximity to the road leading to Old Faithful has meant tourists throwing so much trash into it that it lost its original color. (National Park Service)
Treasure Trove
Henry said they retrieved an immense amount of trash and treasure from the depths of Morning Glory.
“We found tons, probably thousands of coins,” he said. “The main park road used to go right by Morning Glory, so that would account for some of the metal parts that looked like car parts chucked into the bottom of the pool.
“There were a lot of rocks that didn't belong there, and I think we found some hats that probably had blown off people's heads and landed in the pool. And they, wisely, didn't try to retrieve them.”
But Henry noted that nearly everything they recovered had been recently tossed. Anything from the 1880s had long been embedded into the rock and sediment of the pool's walls.
When Yellowstone became the nation’s first national park March 1, 1872, the dynamics of its geothermal features were largely unknown to tourists and scientists. Murphy said tourists were known to throw objects into every hole they could find, hoping to make something happen.
“People didn't understand the plumbing and how geysers worked,” she said. “There were lots of ideas about, ‘If we throw something into this pool, we might be able to make it erupt.’”
That didn’t work. It never does. And it caused permanent damage.
“I think there was some trial and error and a misunderstanding of the damage they were doing,” Murphy said.
Mourning Its Glory
Morning Glory Pool got its name from its color observed in the 1880s. You’d never know it by looking at the pool today.
In 2024, the deepest parts of the Morning Glory Pool are green, gradually transitioning to yellow around its edges. The color change is attributed to the thousands of pounds of trash and artifacts tossed into it by Yellowstone visitors.
Mike Poland, scientist-in-charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, said that temperature was likely the main reason for Morning Glory’s color change. Decades of embedded wishing well debris changed the pool forever.
“Temperature is a huge factor,” he said. “Hotter pools tend to be a brilliant blue, and cooler pools can be more colorful since bacteria can grow there. At Morning Glory, the temperature cooled because people throwing objects in caused the conduit to become partially blocked, and the temperature went down, allowing different types of bacteria to grow.”
Rick Hutchinson uses a long-handled net while tethered with a climbing harness cleaning out Morning Glory Pool in Yellowstone National Park in June or July 1991. (Photo by Jeff Henry) 
Rangers attempting to clean trash out of Morning Glory Pool in September 1975. (Photo by Dan Ing, National Park Service) 
A pile of old coins pulled out of Morning Glory Pool in 1950. (National Park Service)
As It Is
While vandalism still haunts Yellowstone, stricter enforcement and visitor reverence have greatly decreased it. Henry said the best evidence of better behavior is the current appearance of Morning Glory Pool and its neighbors.
“I don't see anywhere near as many coins in pools as I used to back in my early days in the park,” he said. “The bottoms of the more accessible springs used to be paved with coins, but now it's pretty rare to see anything thrown into the pools.”
Cleaning thermal pools is no longer an NPS priority. Yellowstone has naturally adapted to artificial change, and that falls under the mission of preserving the park as it is.
That’s a departure from Henry’s early days when the pools were cleaned “fairly regularly.” He chalks it up as one of several unique Yellowstone experiences that will probably never happen again.
“I remember finding an old tire while cleaning Old Faithful one time,” he said. “Cleaning pools was done on a regular basis. It was like harvesting a crop. But values change, and they don't clean the pools anymore, at least with the frequency and at the scale that we did.”
Still Glorious
The Morning Glory Pool is still sitting and simmering today at the northern edge of the Upper Geyser Basin, just beyond Riverside Geyser and Spiteful Geyser, but it’s not what it was.
Anyone who wants to get an idea of how the Morning Glory Pool looked in its heyday should go to the West Thumb Geyser Basin. Poland said the Abyss Pool has the same shade of dark blue.
“The Abyss Pool has been heating up throughout the summer and has reached a point where most bacteria can't easily survive,” he said. “It’s quite a nice blue right now.”
Yellowstone’s geothermal wonderland is no longer perceived and used as an amusement park, as it was in the early days. It ensures everyone can enjoy the natural wonders unmarred by man's hands — or at least without coins flooring the bottom of every pool.
“I think people are much more respectful than they were in my early days,” Henry said. “It's one way that values and behavior have changed over the years.”
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
