50 free Big Bend National Park trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Big Bend National Park trivia quiz covers the vast, remote park in West Texas where the Rio Grande makes its great turn along the Mexican border. Questions range across the geography (the Chisos Mountains, Emory Peak, the canyons of Santa Elena, Mariscal and Boquillas, the Chihuahuan Desert), the wildlife (Mexican black bears, cougars, the Colima warbler that breeds nowhere else in the US) and the fossils, including the giant pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus dug out of the Javelina Formation. The human history is just as rich: the Chisos and Comanche, Spanish presidios, buffalo soldiers, the quicksilver mines of Terlingua and Mariscal, the hot-springs resort on the river, the 1916 raid that brought in the cavalry, how Texas handed the land to the nation in 1944, the border rules that make a float trip an international departure, and the village of Boquillas across the water. There is also the darkest night sky in the contiguous United States and a chili cook-off founded by Carroll Shelby. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. If you enjoy this one, try our Yellowstone and US National Parks quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Big Bend National Park takes its name from a great curve in which river?
The Rio Grande
For more than 1,000 miles the river forms the US–Mexico border; the park administers about 118 miles of it, including three deep limestone canyons.
Q 02Big Bend is the largest US protected area of which of North America's deserts?
Chihuahuan
The desert stretches deep into Mexico; south of the river the park is flanked by two Mexican protected areas.
Q 03The Chisos Mountains hold what distinction among US mountain ranges?
The only range entirely inside one national park
They cover just 40 square miles and are the southernmost range in the mainland United States, but not the whole country.
Q 04The whole park lies within which single Texas county?
Brewster
At about 801,000 acres, the park alone is bigger than the state of Rhode Island; the county seat, Alpine, is 100 miles from park headquarters.
Q 05What is the highest point in the park?
Emory Peak
It rises to about 7,830 feet, roughly 6,000 feet above the park's low point on the water, and is named for the chief surveyor of the 1852 boundary survey; from the basin below, the nearer Casa Grande looks taller.
Q 06Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, how far into the river does the park's territory extend?
To mid-channel as it flowed in 1848
The rest of the channel and everything south of it is Mexico, which is why the park says it faces 'unusual constraints' enforcing its rules on the water.
Q 07The river has cut three great canyons through the park. Which of these is NOT one of them?
Palo Duro
Palo Duro is the huge canyon in the Texas Panhandle; the park's three cut through limestone uplifts with nearly vertical walls.
Q 08How many bird species have been recorded in the park?
More than 450
That is more than any other US national park; the count sits alongside 1,200 plant species, 56 reptiles and 75 mammals.
Q 09Which small grey songbird breeds nowhere in the United States except the high canyons of the Chisos?
Colima warbler
It arrives in mid-April, nests on the ground in oak-maple habitat around Boot Canyon and the South Rim, and heads back to southwestern Mexico by mid-September.
Q 10Roughly how many cougars actually live in the park, despite some 150 sightings reported each year?
Around two dozen
Most animals hide by day; the park comes alive at night with coyotes, kangaroo rats, grey foxes and collared peccaries.
Q 11Which large mammal lives in the park's mountains, having wandered back in across the border?
Mexican black bear
They recolonised the Chisos from Mexico on their own; a plan to bring back a native canid was blocked by Texas in the late 1980s.
Q 12Which predator did the state of Texas refuse to let the park reintroduce in the late 1980s?
Mexican wolf
The argument was over whether there were enough deer and javelinas to feed a pack.
Q 13How many cactus species grow in the park?
About 60
Prickly pear, claretcup and pitaya are the showy ones; the park has 1,200 plant species overall and about 3,600 kinds of insect.
Q 21Lieutenant Henry Flipper, who served near the Big Bend, was the first African American to do what?
Graduate from West Point
Many soldiers guarding Trans-Pecos Texas were Black 'buffalo soldiers', a name apparently given to them by Native Americans.
Q 22A May 1916 raid on which settlement led Wilson to mobilise the Texas National Guard and station cavalry there?
Glenn Springs
The wax-camp community had a small garrison; the attack drew national headlines during the years of the Mexican Revolution.
Q 23What was the area called when lawmakers in Austin first protected it in 1933?
Texas Canyons State Park
Q 14'Wax camps' along the river harvested which desert plant?
Candelilla
Euphorbia antisyphilitica yields a hard vegetable wax still used in cosmetics and chewing gum; harvesting it was a mainstay of the border economy.
Q 15The largest known pterosaur, found in the park's Javelina Formation in 1971, is called?
Quetzalcoatlus
Graduate student Douglas Lawson found a three-foot wing bone in an arroyo; the wingspan is estimated at 33 to 36 feet, and it is named after the Aztec feathered serpent god.
Q 16The giant pterosaur's species name, northropi, honours what kind of person?
An aircraft designer
Jack Northrop built tailless flying-wing aircraft such as the YB-49 that resembled the animal; the discovery made the cover of Science in 1975.
Q 17Barnum Brown and R.T. Bird found neck vertebrae of which giant sauropod in the park in 1940?
Alamosaurus
They also turned up jawbones of the huge crocodylian Deinosuchus; the first fossil museum burned down in 1941, taking mammoth teeth and sabre-tooth remains with it.
Q 18The park's redesigned Fossil Discovery Exhibit opened in which year?
2017
An earlier bone display had opened in 1957 with Hyracotherium, a horse ancestor, and the hippo-like Coryphodon; the real fossils were swapped for replicas in 1990.
Q 19Which people crossed the park on a named trail on their way to raid deep into Mexico until the mid-1800s?
Comanche
The Comanche Trail passed near the hot springs on the river; the last great native war leader in the region was an Apache of Spanish ancestry named Alzate.
Q 20Which Spanish explorer's expedition passed near the Big Bend around 1535?
Cabeza de Vaca
Later expeditions hunted for precious metals or sought converts; in the late 1700s Spain built a line of presidios along the river to guard New Spain's frontier.
It was renamed Big Bend State Park later that year; Congress passed enabling legislation in 1935 and Texas deeded the land to the federal government.
Q 24In which year did Big Bend become a national park and open to visitors?
1944
It became official on 12 June and opened on 1 July, in the middle of World War II.
Q 25Between 2009 and 2019, about how many people visited the park in an average year?
377,000
That makes it one of the least-visited parks in the lower 48; it is also among the largest and most remote.
Q 26Which metal was extracted from the cinnabar ore mined at Terlingua and Mariscal?
Mercury
The Terlingua district produced most of America's quicksilver into the 1930s, nearly 150,000 flasks, before falling prices closed every mine by 1947. Native Americans reportedly used the red ore for pictographs.
Q 27The park's Mariscal Mine produced what share of US quicksilver output from 1900 to 1943?
Almost a quarter
Its 1,400 flasks each weighed 76 pounds; miners earned $1 to $1.50 for a ten-hour shift and suffered badly from the fumes.
Q 28Which Chicago businessman founded the Chisos Mining Company that built Terlingua?
Howard Perry
He also set up the La Harmonia Company that ran the trading post at Castolon; his mine ran 23 miles of workings on 17 levels before going bust in 1942.
Q 29Which car maker with a huge ranch nearby co-founded Terlingua's 1967 chili cook-off?
Carroll Shelby
More than 10,000 'chiliheads' now descend on the ghost town on the first Saturday of November for two rival championships.
Q 30Visitors cross the Rio Grande to which Mexican village, whose crossing reopened in 2013?
Boquillas del Carmen
It was closed after the September 11 attacks and the village lost nearly half its people; it reopened as a Class B port of entry with limited weekly hours.