Twenty years ago this summer, Yellowstone caught fire. The flames scorched about 1.2 million acres across the area, leaving the impression that the world's first national park had been destroyed.

The 1988 fires changed Yellowstone but didn't destroy it. Seedlings began to appear as early as 1989, and now there are healthy and green 20-year-old trees covering the park.

Dead trees from the 1988 fires line a lake next to new growth June 18, 2008, in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. The fires didn't destroy Yellowstone; they brought new life. Douglas C. Pizac / AP ...

In Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, fires in 2016 burned young forests that regenerated from fires in 1988 and 2000. Our studies of these recent fires have documented greater burn ...

VIEW SLIDESHOW KUSA - Twenty years ago this month, Yellowstone National Park was burning out of control. We took a look back on that year of fire, with one of the helicopter pilots who battled the ...

The massive fires that engulfed Yellowstone National Park in 1988 burned 1.2 million acres in the area. While the blazes looked devastating, fire ecologists now know just how important they are to ...

If conditions were perfectly horrible, Yellowstone National Park could experience another fire season that rivaled the record-setting 1988 burn when about 1,200 square miles were charred, but it ...

More acres of Yellowstone National Park have burned this year than in any other since 1988, the park announced Thursday. As of Wednesday, 22 fires had scorched more than 62,000 acres in the park ...

Twenty years ago, in the summer of 1988, Yellowstone caught fire. The fires, which began in June, continued to burn until November, when winter snows extinguished the last blazes.

The massive fires that engulfed Yellowstone National Park in 1988 burned 1.2 million acres in the area. While the blazes looked devastating, fire… ...