Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park Trivia
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39 free Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park trivia quiz covers the narrow, shadowed gorge in western Colorado that Duane Vandenbusche said combines 'depth, sheerness, narrowness, darkness, and dread' like no other canyon in the West. Questions cover the dimensions (2,722 feet deep at Warner Point, 40 feet wide at the river, the 2,250-foot Painted Wall), the geology of 1.7-billion-year-old gneiss and schist laced with pegmatite, and the river that cut through it an inch a century. The history is a story of people trying to get through: the Ute who avoided it, Captain Gunnison's 1853 survey and his death in Utah, William Jackson Palmer's narrow-gauge railroad and Rudyard Kipling's 'mad ride' through the gorge, the engineer whose 20-day survey took 68 days, the 1901 rubber-raft descent by Fellows and Torrence that found a site for the Gunnison Tunnel, and the monument that finally became a park in 1999. Wildlife, the Gold Medal trout water, the Curecanti reservoirs upstream and the canyon's odd cultural footprints round it out. 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 US National Parks quiz next.
30 of 39 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Black Canyon of the Gunnison lies in which region of Colorado?
The Western Slope
The Western Slope: the park lies on the Rockies' western slope and also on the Colorado Plateau's far eastern edge, so geologists could assign it to either province.
Q 02Why is the Black Canyon of the Gunnison called 'Black'?
Its depths stay in deep shadow
Its depths stay in deep shadow: the walls are really dark-grey rock, but the gorge is so steep and narrow that little sunlight reaches the bottom.
Q 03Why did the Gunnison River cut straight down through hard rock instead of flowing around it?
Its course was already set
Its course was already set: the river first ran over softer volcanic rock, and once entrenched it had no choice but to keep cutting into the hard rock below.
Q 04At The Narrows, how wide is the Black Canyon of the Gunnison at river level?
About 40 feet
About 40 feet: the extremely hard rock resists widening while the river keeps cutting down, so the gorge there is far deeper than it is wide.
Q 05How deep is the Black Canyon of the Gunnison at its deepest point, near Warner Point?
About 2,700 feet
About 2,700 feet: the Grand Canyon is more than twice as deep, but no North American canyon combines depth, narrowness and sheer walls like this one.
Q 06Which boats can make the trip down the Gunnison River through Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park?
Kayaks only
Kayaks only: the run is for expert kayakers, some stretches can't be run at all, and rafting isn't possible.
Q 07The pale veins cutting across the Black Canyon of the Gunnison's dark walls are made of which rock?
Pegmatite
Pegmatite: molten rock pushed into the older dark rock and hardened into the pale dikes that streak the canyon walls.
Q 08Roughly how old are the dark gneiss and schist that form most of the Black Canyon's walls?
About 2 billion years
About 2 billion years: the rock is vastly older than the canyon itself, which the river only began cutting about two million years ago.
Q 09The 2008 Black Canyon Decree settled a decades-long legal fight over what?
River flows for the park
River flows for the park: it set water releases to protect the canyon's river, whose natural flow had been disrupted by three federal dams upstream.
Q 10Where in Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park does the river make its steepest plunge, 240 feet per mile?
Chasm View
Chasm View: that steep drop gives the river the energy to cut its bed down faster than the walls can widen, keeping the gorge narrow.
Q 11A Spanish expedition led by two Franciscan priests reached the Gunnison River while officially seeking a route to where?
California
California: with snow closing in on the mountains ahead, the priests turned back to Santa Fe before they ever got there.
Q 12Fossils found in Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park date from which famous era?
The age of dinosaurs
The age of dinosaurs: yet instead of skeletons, the park's finds from that time are mostly plant fossils, burrows and bone fragments.
Q 13Captain John Williams Gunnison first described the canyon in 1853 while surveying what?
A railroad route to the Pacific
Q 21Which president dedicated the Gunnison Tunnel in 1909?
William Howard Taft
William Howard Taft dedicated it in 1909, though the river's diversion dam wasn't finished until years later.
Q 22Before Congress made it a national park in 1999, what had Black Canyon of the Gunnison been since 1933?
A national monument
A national monument: the 1999 law abolished the monument, folded its lands into the new park and added land from the Bureau of Land Management.
Q 23Which New Deal agency built the North Rim Road and its overlooks in the mid-1930s?
Civilian Conservation Corps
A railroad route to the Pacific: the gorge blocked his party, so the survey had to detour south around it.
Q 14What happened to Captain Gunnison later in 1853?
He was killed by Ute warriors in Utah
He was killed by Ute warriors in Utah: afterwards his deputy, Lieutenant Edward Beckwith, took command and carried the railroad survey on.
Q 15Which railroad pushed a narrow-gauge line into the Black Canyon of the Gunnison in the early 1880s?
Denver and Rio Grande
The Denver and Rio Grande found the canyon below Cimarron too rough to build through, so its tracks left the gorge and climbed over Cerro Summit.
Q 16Spain's 1765 expeditions into western Colorado were searching partly for what?
Silver
Silver: native traders had brought lumps of silver to New Mexico, but the pure silver they chased eluded them.
Q 17During engineer Byron Bryant's winter survey deep in the Black Canyon, what did most of his crew do?
Walked off the job
Walked off the job: only a few men stayed with Bryant, and a survey planned for about 20 days dragged on for more than 60.
Q 18Which famous writer called his 1889 train ride through the gorge 'the mad ride'?
Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling said the track looked like dirt dropped into the river with a few rails pinned on top, and he ended up praying for the train's safety.
Q 19In December 1906, what knocked Gunnison Tunnel drillers from their machines and halted that heading?
An underground stream
An underground stream: its jets shot 40 feet through drill holes, and work on that heading stopped for about six months until a ventilation shaft was sunk.
Q 20What did the 1901 explorers use instead of the wooden boats that had doomed a 1900 attempt?
A multi-chambered rubber raft
Their multi-chambered rubber raft, an inflatable ringed by a lifeline, floated their 35-pound packs through the rapids that had wrecked the wooden boats of the 1900 attempt.
The Civilian Conservation Corps built the five-mile North Rim Road and its five overlooks in the mid-1930s; the road is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Q 24In winter, how do visitors reach the overlooks along most of Black Canyon of the Gunnison's South Rim Drive?
On skis or snowshoes
On skis or snowshoes: plows stop at the visitor center, and when snow allows rangers groom the six miles of road beyond as a ski trail.
Q 25Which nearby town, 15 miles west of the South Rim entrance, is Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park's main gateway?
Montrose
Montrose: co-founder Joe Selig named the town after a character in Sir Walter Scott's novel A Legend of Montrose.
Q 26The unmaintained inner-canyon descents are called what?
Routes or draws
The park calls them routes on the South Rim and draws on the North Rim: unmarked Class 3 scrambles thick with poison ivy, taking hours each way, for which hikers need a wilderness permit.
Q 27What must anglers on the park's Gold Medal stretch do with any rainbow trout they catch?
Release it
Release it: every rainbow must go back, yet anglers may still keep a few brown trout from the same stretch.
Q 28Which upstream reservoir, created by damming the Gunnison River, is Colorado's largest body of water?
Blue Mesa
Blue Mesa: as the reservoir filled in the 1960s, its waters drowned the towns of Iola, Cebolla and Sapinero.
Q 29Which small songbird that walks underwater to feed lives along the river in the canyon?
American dipper
The American dipper, a stocky grey songbird, walks and swims underwater in the fast Gunnison to pick insect larvae off the streambed; peregrine falcons and white-throated swifts work the walls above.
Q 30Black Canyon gilia, a rare wildflower of the phlox family, grows mainly where?
In crevices on steep cliffs
In crevices on steep cliffs: though that terrain is largely out of reach, rock climbing is still counted among its threats.