Live camera
Mount Washburn live camera — Wyoming
Looking south-west from the fire lookout on the 3,122 m summit. On clear days the view reaches the floor of the caldera and Yellowstone Lake.
Sample October 2026What you are looking at
Looking down to the southwest from a summit. A ridge of exposed rock falls away at an angle in front, beyond it conifer forest as far as the eye reaches, and further back a flat plateau and a sheet of water catching the light.
The camera stands on the fire lookout built on the 3,122-metre summit of Mount Washburn. The mountain sits on the northern rim of the Yellowstone caldera, and the forest it looks down on is the caldera floor. On days when the air is clear the view carries as far as Yellowstone Lake.
The mountain is older than the caldera it looks down on. It is what is left of volcanoes that erupted some fifty million years ago, worn away until only the harder cores stood out as peaks. The tower on the summit was built in 1940 and is staffed through the summer to watch for fires.
It looks far from a high place, so the haze in the air becomes the view itself. There are days when the far distance is in the frame, and days that end at the ridge in front.
The mountain is named for Henry Washburn, who led the party that went round this country in 1870. The reports they brought back got about, and two years later, in 1872, Yellowstone was set aside as the first national park in the world. The forest being looked down on here became a park on the strength of the record kept by the men who climbed this hill.
It is a still camera and the refresh interval is not published. Mountain time, fifteen to sixteen hours behind Japan.
About this camera
| Place | Wyoming |
| Format | Still image |
| Time zone | America/Denver (UTC-7, DST UTC-6) |
| Category | Nature |
| Operator | U.S. National Park Service |
| Terms of use | U.S. government work |
The operator's own page
The footage belongs to each agency. This site is an unofficial guide, and each sample frame was copied once per camera under that agency's terms of use.
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