The Most Beautiful Places in Wyoming
9 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Wyoming are Yellowstone National Park, Grand Prismatic Spring and Devils Tower. The list covers 9 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Wyoming holds the meeting point of the high plains and the Rocky Mountains, and in its north-west corner sits one of the most active geothermal regions on Earth. A volcanic hotspot beneath Yellowstone heats groundwater into geysers and coloured springs, while to the south the Teton and Wind River ranges lift raw granite above glacial lakes. It was here that the United States created the world's first national park in 1872 and its first national monument in 1906.
Yellowstone gathers most of the state's wonders. Old Faithful erupts with a regularity that made it famous from the first survey expeditions; Grand Prismatic Spring, the largest hot spring in the country, rings its deep blue centre with bands of orange and yellow; Mammoth Hot Springs builds white travertine terraces that change shape year by year. The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone cuts through yellow volcanic rock, and the view from Artist Point frames its Lower Falls at the head of the gorge.
Beyond the park, the Grand Teton rises abruptly from the floor of Jackson Hole without foothills, one of the sharpest mountain fronts in North America. In the Wind River Range, the Cirque of the Towers rings a high basin with granite spires beloved by climbers. And on the plains of the north-east, Devils Tower stands alone as a column of fluted rock sacred to many Plains tribes.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yellowstone National Park | National park | ✓ |
| 2 | Grand Prismatic Spring | Hot spring | |
| 3 | Devils Tower | Rock formation | |
| 4 | Old Faithful | Geyser | |
| 5 | Mammoth Hot Springs | Hot spring | |
| 6 | Grand Teton | Mountain | |
| 7 | Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone | Canyon | |
| 8 | Cirque of the Towers | Mountain | |
| 9 | Artist Point, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone | Scenic viewpoint |
01 Yellowstone National Park
United States44.600° N 110.500° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
- biosphere reserve
James St. John from Newark, Ohio · CC BY 2.0 On 1 March 1872, Ulysses S. Grant signed a piece of legislation that had no real precedent anywhere in the world: setting aside more than two million acres of Wyoming and Montana territory not for a king, a church, or a private estate, but simply to be left alone.
Did you know? The largest known eruption of the hotspot, 2.1 million years ago, ejected about 2,450 cubic kilometres of material.
02 Grand Prismatic Spring
United States44.525° N 110.838° W
Image by MikeGoad from Pixabay Seen from above, the Grand Prismatic Spring looks like an eye painted by a colourist: a deep blue pupil, a ring of pale turquoise, then bands of yellow, orange and rust-red spreading out over the grey sinter in rays of runoff.
Did you know? According to the National Park Service, the orange, sponge-like mats in alkaline springs like this one are typically built by cyanobacteria.
03 Devils Tower
United States44.590° N 104.715° W
Image by jjorstad from Pixabay Devils Tower rises out of the rolling pine and prairie country of north-eastern Wyoming like a giant fluted stump: a flat-topped column of grey rock about 265 metres high from its base, with its summit at 1,558 metres above sea level and nearly 390 metres above the Belle Fourche River that loops beneath it.
Did you know? In 1937 Fritz Wiessner climbed the tower almost entirely free, placing a single piton that he later said he regretted.
04 Old Faithful
United States44.460° N 110.828° W
Image by TXVisual from Pixabay Old Faithful is not the tallest geyser in Yellowstone, nor the most powerful — that distinction belongs to the erratic Steamboat Geyser. What makes it extraordinary is its punctuality.
Did you know? In 1939 Old Faithful erupted on average every 66 and a half minutes; since 2000 the average gap has grown to about 90 minutes.
05 Mammoth Hot Springs
United States44.971° N 110.706° W
Image by Steppinstars from Pixabay Mammoth Hot Springs is the place where Yellowstone builds in stone. On a hillside at the park's northern edge, hot water rises through limestone, dissolves it, and on reaching the air drops it again as travertine — more than two tons a day.
Did you know? Liberty Cap, an extinct spring cone about 11 metres tall, was named by the 1871 Hayden Survey for its likeness to the peaked caps worn as symbols of liberty.
06 Grand Teton
United States43.741° N 110.802° W
Image by MOHANN from Pixabay Grand Teton is the summit of a mountain range that seems to have no approach. The Tetons rise straight out of the flat valley of Jackson Hole with almost no foothills, the peak itself reaching 4,199 m (13,775 ft) and standing between roughly 1,200 and 2,100 m above the valley floor. 5 billion years ago.
Did you know? The mountain has 38 established climbing routes with 58 variations, and three of them appear in the classic book Fifty Classic Climbs of North America.
07 Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
United States44.717° N 110.497° W
Brocken Inaglory · CC BY-SA 3.0 In the middle of Yellowstone National Park the Yellowstone River drops over two waterfalls and then runs through a canyon whose colours give the whole park its name. 2 km wide.
Did you know? At its brink the Lower Falls is only about 21 metres wide, compared with roughly 790 metres for Niagara's Horseshoe Falls.
08 Cirque of the Towers
United States42.783° N 109.232° W
U.S. Geological Survey · Public domain In the southern Wind River Range of Wyoming, a glacier carved out a nearly circular bowl, and along its rim stands a crown of bare granite spires: the Cirque of the Towers.
Did you know? Lizard Head Peak, the cirque's highest summit, is the third-highest peak in the southern Winds and stands just east of the Continental Divide.
09 Artist Point, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
Artist Point Overlook
United States44.721° N 110.479° W
Bernard Spragg. NZ from Christchurch, New Zealand · CC0 Artist Point is a rocky ledge on the south rim of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and it frames what may be the single most painted and photographed scene in the American West: the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River, a 308-foot (94-metre) white plume dropping between walls of yellow, ochre, salmon and cream…
Did you know? Geologists think much of the canyon was scoured by sudden floods released when ice dams at the outlet of Yellowstone Lake melted, about 14,000–18,000 years ago.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Wyoming?
- On our list, Yellowstone National Park ranks first, followed by Grand Prismatic Spring and Devils Tower.
- Why is Grand Prismatic Spring so colourful?
- The centre is too hot for most life and looks deep blue, while the cooler water towards the edges supports mats of heat-loving microbes. Different species thrive at different temperatures, producing the rings of yellow, orange and red.
- Is Yellowstone a volcano?
- Yes. Yellowstone sits on a large volcanic system that produced three huge caldera-forming eruptions over the past roughly two million years. The heat from its magma chamber powers the park's geysers and hot springs.
- How was Devils Tower formed?
- Devils Tower formed from molten rock that cooled underground into a mass of hard igneous rock, cracking into columns as it cooled. Erosion later removed the softer sedimentary layers around it, leaving the tower exposed.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Wyoming?
- In our collection, the places in Wyoming are most often mountains (2), hot springs (2), canyons and gorges (1) and rock formations (1).
- How many places are on this list in Wyoming?
- The list covers 9 places.