August 20th is the 20-year anniversary of "Black Saturday" in Yellowstone National Park. This is when much of the sky over the park was black with smoke, on a day where it was learned the 1988 fires of Yellowstone had doubled to almost 500,000 acres.

It's been 20 years since the eyes of the nation were upon our region, as Yellowstone burned and some wondered if it was ruined for future generations. Yellowstone National Park -- It's pristine beauty attracts travelers from around the world - and it's all in our backyard.

It offers natural wonders and provides rare encounters with the wild that some of us might never have expected. Whether it's science, scenery or excitement, Yellowstone is one of the most sought-after adventures in America.

And it was all feared gone in the summer of 1988.

Roy Renkin, Yellowstone National Park: "It seems just like yesterday, it's still very vivid in my mind."

Lightning ignited a fire in June, America took notice in August, and fire crews didn't rest until September. In the end, 51 mostly lightning-caused fires affected 36 percent of the park.

This is how it would've looked, after a fire-fight by 25,000 people - what was then the largest fire fight our country had seen.

Of Yellowstone's large animals, only about 300 died -- 2 moose, 4 mule deer and 9 bison. 246 elk were killed, but that's because they were trapped in a canyon when fleeing the flames.

And there were other misconceptions as well.

Twenty years after the fires, those who study Yellowstone take us along on a tour of several forests, each with their own story.

Renkin: "I remember one soil scientist said we'd be lucky to get anything to grow here, and it would be a meadow for centuries and it might take a couple hundred years for soils to build up where it could sustain a forest."

But it just wasn't so.

Young, sun-loving lodgepole pines, once just pinecones, now inch toward the blue sky, some around 15 feet tall, with no canopy of trees blocking their light. Biologist Roy Renkin says their impressive growth is one of the biggest surprises to emerge from the fires of '88.

Renkin: "Mother nature was in control, we didn't do anything."

Whether if taken into burned areas by wind, animal or otherwise, it didn't take long for seeds to settle and take root. Such widespread regrowth is a surprise only because Yellowstone and those who live and work there had never experienced such an overwhelming fire in our lifetime.

But consider the park's lifetime.

Renkin: "What people don't realize is that the burned landscape of Yellowstone looked like that many times over the millennia, or since glaciation, 12,000 years ago."

As our tour continues on, the lesson to those who predicted doom for Yellowstone, becomes clear.

Al Nash, Yellowstone National Park: "Yellowstone was not devastated, Yellowstone was not destroyed, what happened here in 1988 happened before and could happen again, but certainly not in our lifetime."

Tuesday night after the Olympics, we continue our look at the 20-year anniversary of the Yellowstone fires, including a look at some of the criticisms of the fire-fighting effort, and how and why fire-fighting policies in Yellowstone have changed.