Capitol Reef National Park Trivia
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99 free Capitol Reef National Park trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Capitol Reef National Park trivia quiz covers the long, thin park in south-central Utah built around the Waterpocket Fold, the biggest exposed monocline in North America. Questions cover the geology and the white Navajo Sandstone domes that gave the park its name, the Fremont people and their 'moki huts', the Mormon village of Fruita and its 2,500-tree orchards, and landmarks such as Cassidy Arch, Hickman Bridge, the Golden Throne and the Temples of the Sun and Moon. The history runs from Powell's surveyors and the 'Wayne Wonderland' boosters through Franklin Roosevelt's 1937 monument, Charles Kelly the custodian-without-pay, the uranium prospecting fight, State Route 24, Lyndon Johnson's huge 1968 enlargement and Richard Nixon's 1971 signature on the park bill. There are also questions on the trails, the Burr Trail and Notom road, the fruit harvest, the Gold Tier dark sky and the gateway town of Torrey. 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 Bryce Canyon and US National Parks quizzes next.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Capitol Reef National Park is in which US state?
Utah
Capitol Reef lies in south-central Utah, some 200 miles south of Salt Lake City; its visitor center sits in the old orchard hamlet of Fruita on the Fremont River.
Q 02What are the park's rough dimensions?
About 60 miles long and 6 miles wide
About 60 miles long and 6 miles wide on average, the park is a thin north–south strip tracing the fold; its 241,904 acres run far longer than they are broad.
Q 03The first half of the park's name comes from what?
White sandstone domes that resemble the US Capitol
White sandstone domes that resemble the US Capitol gave the park the first half of its name; Capitol Dome, above the Fremont River, is one such rounded summit.
Q 04The geological backbone of the park is a nearly 100-mile warp in the Earth's crust called what?
The Waterpocket Fold
The Waterpocket Fold runs nearly 100 miles from Thousand Lake Mountain south to Lake Powell; its name comes from the eroded basins in the sandstone that hold rainwater.
Q 05The park's great fold is the largest exposed example in North America of what kind of structure?
A monocline
A monocline is a step-like fold with one steep limb between otherwise flat-lying layers; the park's fold formed during the Laramide orogeny, when a buried fault lifted its west side far above its east.
Q 06What did local boosters call the area in the 1920s while campaigning for its protection?
Wayne Wonderland
Ephraim Pectol and his brother-in-law Joseph Hickman promoted it in newspapers and even paid a Salt Lake City photographer $150 to lecture on it.
Q 07Which president proclaimed Capitol Reef National Monument on 2 August 1937?
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed the 37,711-acre monument on 2 August 1937 under the Antiquities Act; the Depression-era Park Service had no money to develop it and left it unstaffed for years.
Q 08In which year did Capitol Reef become a national park?
1971
Capitol Reef became a national park in 1971, when Public Law 92-207, signed on 18 December, converted the 1937 monument into the state's fifth national park.
Q 09Which park landmark near the Temple of the Sun is a mound of selenite crystals?
Glass Mountain
Glass Mountain is a mound of selenite, a crystalline form of gypsum, standing in the park's remote northern district near the Temple of the Sun; collecting its crystals is prohibited.
Q 10What did Lyndon Johnson do for the monument on his last day in office?
Added 215,000 acres, roughly six times its size
Added 215,000 acres, roughly six times its size — that was Johnson's proclamation of 20 January 1969, which stretched the monument from Thousand Lake Mountain almost to the Colorado River over furious local objections.
Q 11Under what title did Charles Kelly look after the monument before becoming its first superintendent in 1950?
Custodian-without-pay
Custodian-without-pay was Charles Kelly's title from 1943, when he and his wife moved to Fruita to watch over the unfunded monument; a salaried post only came in 1950.
Q 12Until it had its own staff, the monument was administered from which other park?
Zion
Zion administered the monument as a satellite from its 1937 creation, the new unit having neither a budget nor paid staff of its own.
Q 13Which paved highway, built through the Fremont River canyon in 1962, sent visitor numbers soaring?
State Route 24
Q 21The arch above Grand Wash is named after which outlaw, said to have hidden nearby while on the run?
Butch Cassidy
Butch Cassidy is the namesake: the outlaw supposedly used Grand Wash and the Fruita country as a hideout in the 1890s, and the arch above the wash is one visitors can walk across on foot.
Q 22Which canyon's name refers to Mormon polygamists who hid there from federal marshals?
Cohab Canyon
Cohab Canyon, a hidden canyon above the Fruita campground, is said to have sheltered 'cohabs' — polygamist Mormon men dodging the federal marshals who enforced the 1880s anti-polygamy laws.
Q 23Hickman Bridge, reached by a 2-mile round-trip trail, spans about how far?
133 feet
State Route 24, driven through the Fremont River canyon in 1962, replaced the flood-prone Capitol Gorge wagon road; the old through-route in the gorge was left to hikers.
Q 14Later Paiute called the old stone granaries 'moki huts', believing them to be what?
Homes of a race of tiny people
Homes of a race of tiny people is what the later Paiute took the granaries for; the 'moki huts' were in fact storage bins for harvested crops left by the Fremont farmers centuries earlier.
Q 15Which archaeologist named the Fremont culture in a 1931 report?
Noel Morss
Noel Morss of Harvard's Peabody Museum named the Fremont culture in his 1931 report on the ancient farmers of the Fremont River valley, distinguishing them from the Ancestral Puebloans to the south.
Q 16Which member of John Wesley Powell's expedition crossed the park's great fold in 1872?
Almon H. Thompson
Almon H. Thompson, Powell's brother-in-law and chief topographer, crossed the fold in 1872 with a pack train sent overland to retrieve a boat the survey had cached on the Colorado.
Q 17Mormon settlers founded the village at the heart of the park in 1880 under what original name?
Junction
Junction was the settlement's first name, for its site where a creek meets the Fremont River; it became Fruita in the early 1900s as its orchards flourished.
Q 18What may visitors do in Fruita's historic orchards at harvest time?
Pick the fruit for a small fee
Pick the fruit for a small fee is the harvest rule: visitors may eat what they like inside the orchard for nothing, then pay by the pound for whatever is in season and carried out.
Q 19Which Fruita farmhouse, built by Calvin Pendleton in 1908, later became the park's homestead store?
Gifford House
Gifford House takes its name from Dewey Gifford, whose family lived there from 1928 to 1969; the Park Service restored the 1908 Pendleton-built home and opened it as a store and museum.
Q 20The one-room Fruita schoolhouse, opened in 1896, was also used for what?
Dances and religious services
Dances and religious services also filled the log schoolhouse, which doubled as Fruita's church and community hall; classes ran there until 1941, when the dwindling village could no longer fill a school.
133 feet is the span of Hickman Bridge, a Kayenta Formation arch about 125 feet high that stands over a dry wash; the 1.8-mile round-trip trail climbs from the highway.
Q 24Hickman Bridge is named after Joseph Hickman, who was what?
A school principal turned state legislator
A school principal turned state legislator, Joseph Hickman ran the county high school before winning a seat in the state legislature in 1924; he drowned at Fish Lake the following year.
Q 25Which animal is the signature figure of the park's Fremont petroglyph panels?
Bighorn sheep
Bighorn sheep, pecked in profile with curling horns, crowd the Fremont petroglyph panel along the Fremont River east of the visitor center, beside stylised human figures.
Q 26The Temples of the Sun and Moon are freestanding monoliths of which sandstone?
Entrada
Entrada Sandstone, a soft reddish Jurassic rock, forms both Temples, which stand a short distance apart on the valley floor; the Temple of the Sun is the larger of the pair.
Q 27Which unpaved route leads to the Temples of the Sun and Moon?
Cathedral Road
Cathedral Road, a graded dirt track, runs north from the highway near Caineville through the valley's sandstone monoliths; the Notom-Bullfrog Road and Burr Trail instead serve the park's southern half.
Q 28Which landmark's trail starts at the Capitol Gorge end of the Scenic Drive?
The Golden Throne
The Golden Throne, a massive yellow-gold sandstone butte, is reached by a 4-mile round-trip trail from the Capitol Gorge trailhead at the end of the 7.9-mile paved Scenic Drive.
Q 29The Halls Creek Narrows, the park's longest strenuous hike, runs about how far?
22 miles
22 miles is the round-trip distance of the Halls Creek Narrows route, which drops from the Halls Creek Overlook, follows the creek bed to the narrows and back, and is usually split over two or three days.
Q 30The first rappel on the popular Cassidy Arch canyoneering route drops how far, right beneath the arch?
140 feet
The route has eight rappels in about 2.3 miles and takes 2.5 to 4.5 hours; every canyoneering route needs its own free day permit.