50 free Glacier National Park trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Glacier National Park trivia quiz covers the million-acre park on Montana's Canadian border that George Bird Grinnell called the Crown of the Continent. Questions cover the geology of the Lewis Overthrust and its billion-year-old fossils, the glaciers that have shrunk from 150 to about 25 and may be gone by 2030, Triple Divide Peak, Lake McDonald and the 700 lakes, and the wildlife from grizzlies and mountain goats to harlequin ducks and bull trout. History covers the Blackfeet and the 1895 sale of the mountains, Grinnell's campaign, Taft's 1910 signature, Louis Hill's Great Northern Railway chalets and 'America's Switzerland', the Going-to-the-Sun Road and the Big Drift, the world's first International Peace Park with Waterton, the Red Jammer buses, the 1916 world-record temperature plunge at Browning, the fires and the wooden tour boats. Trails, transport and visitor numbers 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 Yellowstone and US National Parks quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Glacier National Park is in which US state?
Montana
It sits in the northwest corner of the state on the Canadian border, covering more than a million acres.
Q 02Which Canadian park joins Glacier to form the world's first International Peace Park?
Waterton Lakes
Rotary clubs on both sides of the border pushed the idea in 1931; the US Senate approved it in March 1932 and Canada followed that May.
Q 03Which president signed the bill creating Glacier National Park on 11 May 1910?
William Howard Taft
The Boone and Crockett Club, a conservationist and a railway president had spearheaded the bill.
Q 04Who coined 'Crown of the Continent' in 1901 and spent two decades campaigning for the park?
George Bird Grinnell
He first came in 1885 on a hunting trip guided by author James Willard Schultz; a mountain and a glacier now carry his name.
Q 05How many active glaciers remained in the park by 2010, down from about 150 in the mid-1800s?
25
Only ice fields over 25 acres count as active; scientists estimate the rest may vanish within a couple of decades if current trends hold.
Q 06By what year do scientists estimate all the park's active glaciers could disappear?
2030
An earlier estimate said 2020; a placard was updated to read 'when they will completely disappear, however, depends on how and when we act'.
Q 07Which ice field is famous for repeat photographs, taken between 1938 and 2015, that show its retreat?
Grinnell
Between 1850 and 1979, nearly three-quarters of the ice near the Blackfoot and Jackson ice fields melted away, and the two split apart.
Q 08What is the Going-to-the-Sun Road?
The only route that crosses the park, over Logan Pass
Finished in 1932, the 53-mile road bisects the park and was named a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1985.
Q 09How high is Logan Pass, the road's crest on the Continental Divide?
6,646 feet
The visitor center there logged a record 417,824 contacts in 2025; up to 80 feet of snow can bury the pass in spring.
Q 10What is the 'Big Drift'?
The deepest snowfield on the Sun Road
Ploughing the road takes about ten weeks even with machines that move 4,000 tons an hour; some days the crew clears only 500 feet.
Q 11Vehicles on the high part of the Sun Road may be no longer than what?
21 feet
They must also be under 8 feet wide between Avalanche Creek and Rising Sun; the road is narrow with hairpin turns west of the pass.
Q 12The Sun Road and Wild Goose Island appear in the opening credits of which 1980 horror film?
The Shining
Aerial shots follow Jack Torrance's car along Saint Mary Lake on the way to his hotel job interview.
Q 13Which Native nation sold some 800,000 acres in 1895 that became the eastern half of Glacier National Park?
The Blackfeet
Chief White Calf agreed to $1.5 million on the understanding that hunting rights would continue; the park's 1910 law made no such promise and the dispute has never fully ended.
Q 21What is the tallest mountain in the park?
Mount Cleveland
It rises to 10,466 feet, one of six peaks over 10,000 feet in the park.
Q 22Water falling on Triple Divide Peak can flow to which three destinations?
The Pacific, Hudson Bay and the Gulf of Mexico
It is the hydrological apex of North America, though only 8,020 feet high; if Hudson Bay counts as Arctic, it is the only point on Earth draining to three oceans.
Q 23The Lewis Overthrust pushed the park's ancient rocks how far eastward over younger strata?
About 50 miles
Q 14What did the people of the eastern slopes call the park's mountains, such as Chief Mountain?
The Backbone of the World
The peaks were used for vision quests and gave shelter from the winter winds of the plains.
Q 15Which railroad built the park's Swiss-style hotels to sell it as 'America's Switzerland'?
Great Northern
President Louis Hill picked every site himself; the hotels never made a profit but filled his trains, and he sponsored artists to paint in the park.
Q 16The Many Glacier Hotel, the 'Gem of the West', stands on the shore of which body of water?
Swiftcurrent Lake
Built in a single year and opened on 4 July 1915, its four-storey lobby is ringed with Swiss-patterned balconies.
Q 17As of 2020, which of the railway's backcountry chalets were still in operation?
Sperry, Granite Park and Belton
Sperry Chalet was gutted by the 2017 Sprague Fire, leaving only stone walls; it was rebuilt and reopened in 2020.
Q 18What are the park's famous red tour buses called?
Red Jammers
The restored 1930s White Motor Company coaches earned the name from drivers jamming the gears; they were rebuilt in 2001.
Q 19What is the largest and deepest body of water in the park?
Lake McDonald
It is 10 miles long and 464 feet deep; the park has over 700 lakes but only 131 have names.
Q 20Why are lakes such as Avalanche and Cracker Lake an opaque turquoise?
Suspended glacial silt
The same rock flour turns some streams milky white; the cold lakes hold little plankton, so they stay very clear but pollutants linger.
The result is Proterozoic rock 1.4 to 1.5 billion years older than the Cretaceous rock it sits on; Chief Mountain is the most dramatic remnant.
Q 24The park's rocks hold about a billion-year-old fossils of which early life form?
Stromatolites
Six species of the blue-green algae mounds are documented; a find called Horodyskia pushed the origin of complex-celled life back a full billion years.
Q 25Chief Mountain, an isolated remnant of the overthrust, rises how far above the Great Plains?
About 2,500 feet
Henry L. Stimson, later Secretary of War, climbed its steep east face in 1892 with two companions, one of them a Blackfoot.
Q 26Which two native mammals seen when Europeans arrived had vanished from the park by 2020?
Bison and woodland caribou
Almost every other historic species survives, giving biologists an intact ecosystem; grizzlies and lynx are threatened but at historical numbers here.
Q 27Which threatened fish must be released immediately if caught in the park?
Bull trout
No permit is needed to fish and limits are liberal otherwise; introduced lake trout have hammered native fish in some lakes.
Q 28Which non-native fungus has killed nearly a third of Glacier National Park's whitebark pines?
Blister rust
The pine's fatty seeds feed red squirrels and Clark's nutcrackers, and bears raid the squirrels' caches.
Q 29Which colourful waterfowl is a signature species of the park's lakes and streams?
Harlequin duck
More than 260 bird species have been recorded, with bald and golden eagles, peregrines and ospreys resident all year.
Q 30What world weather record was set at Browning, just east of the park, on the night of 23–24 January 1916?
A 100 °F temperature drop in 24 hours
Thermometers fell from 44 °F to −56 °F between one afternoon and the next.