50 free Hawaii Volcanoes National Park trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Hawaii Volcanoes National Park trivia quiz covers the Big Island park built around two of the most active volcanoes on Earth: Kilauea, which erupted almost without pause from 1983 to 2018 and again from 2020, and Mauna Loa, the largest active volcano on the planet. Questions cover the geology and the eruptions, from the 1959 Kilauea Iki fountains to the 2018 summit collapse and the 2022 Mauna Loa awakening, the caldera that Hawaiians hold sacred as the home of Pele, and the park's lava tubes, craters and coastal roads that keep getting buried. History is here too: the missionaries who first wrote about the crater in 1823, Mark Twain at Volcano House, Thomas Jaggar's observatory, the Buffalo Soldiers who built the first trails, Lorrin Thurston's campaign for the 1916 park, the Kahuku expansion and the endangered nene, hawksbills and hawks the park protects. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is marked on every question, so it works for a car game on Crater Rim Drive or a serious park-nerd challenge. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and each question carries its citation. If you enjoy it, try our Volcanoes and Haleakala quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which two active volcanoes lie within Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park?
Kīlauea and Mauna Loa
One is among the most active volcanoes on Earth; the other is the world's largest active volcano by mass and volume.
Q 02What does the name Kīlauea mean in Hawaiian, a nod to how often it erupts?
Much spreading
Lavas less than 1,000 years old cover 90 percent of the volcano's surface.
Q 03Mauna Loa's name translates as what?
Long mountain
Its gentle shield slopes hold an estimated 18,000 cubic miles of rock, though its summit is about 125 feet lower than Mauna Kea's.
Q 04How high is the summit of Mauna Loa?
13,679 feet
The park runs from sea level to that summit, from tropical rainforest to barren desert.
Q 05Kīlauea's summit crater Halemaʻumaʻu is traditionally regarded as the home of which deity?
Pele
Hawaiians still leave offerings at the crater; phenomena such as Pele's hair and Pele's tears take her name.
Q 06When it was created in 1916, the park also included which volcano on another island?
Haleakalā
The original Hawaii National Park was split into two separate parks in 1961.
Q 07Which president signed the 1916 bill creating the park?
Woodrow Wilson
It was the eleventh national park and the first in a US territory; the National Park Service itself was created a few weeks later.
Q 08Which newspaper owner and hotel investor was the driving force behind creating the park?
Lorrin A. Thurston
Grandson of a missionary, he ran editorials in The Honolulu Advertiser and printed endorsements from John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt; a lava tube bears his family's name.
Q 09Which Buffalo Soldier regiment built the park's first trails and infrastructure from 1915 to 1917?
25th Infantry
Working with gunny sacks and 12-pound hammers, six companies built a 30-mile trail between the two volcanoes out of crushed lava mixed with soil.
Q 10Who were the first Western visitors to reach Kīlauea, in 1823?
Missionaries William Ellis and Asa Thurston
Ellis wrote that they stopped and trembled, struck mute by the erupting abyss below.
Q 11What is the only hotel located inside the park?
Volcano House
A series of hotels of that name has stood on the crater rim since a grass hut in 1846; the current building dates from 1941.
Q 12Which famous author stayed at the crater-rim hotel and described the volcano in Roughing It?
Mark Twain
He stayed in the 1866 wood-frame version; the 1877 building now houses the Volcano Art Center.
Q 13In 1790 a party of warriors was caught in an explosive eruption; what trace of them can still be seen?
Footprints in the lava
The 1790 Footprints site is on the National Register of Historic Places; explosive eruptions like that one are rare at Kīlauea.
Q 21After what gap did Mauna Loa erupt again in November 2022?
About 40 years
The previous eruption, in 1984, sent a lava flow within four miles of Hilo, close enough to light the city at night; the 2022 event lasted about two weeks.
Q 22Mauna Loa's summit caldera is called Mokuʻāweoweo, named for what?
A red fish
The ʻāweoweo fish's colouring was thought to resemble the caldera's eruptive fires; the caldera floor lies up to 558 feet below the rim.
Q 23The 1959 eruption of Kīlauea Iki produced a lava fountain of roughly what height, a Hawaiian record?
1,900 feet
The five-week eruption filled the pit crater with a lava lake whose crusted floor visitors now hike across; it is still cooling and shrinking.
Q 14Who founded the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and directed it from 1912 to 1940?
Thomas Jaggar
A Harvard PhD who had seen the Mont Pelée disaster in 1902, he made volcanoes his life's work; the museum named for him was demolished in 2024 after 2018 damage.
Q 15Which federal agency runs the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory?
US Geological Survey
It is one of five USGS volcano observatories and watches six Hawaiian volcanoes; since 2018 it has worked from temporary offices in Hilo.
Q 16Kīlauea's eastern rift zone eruption ran nearly continuously from 1983 until which year?
2018
It destroyed the towns of Kalapana and Kaimū and their black-sand beach in 1990 and was the longest-lived rift-zone eruption of the past two centuries.
Q 17What is the name of the cinder cone that grew on Kīlauea's east rift during the 1983-2018 eruption?
Puʻu ʻŌʻō
Kalapana elders named it hill of the digging stick; scientists had first nicknamed it Puʻu O after the letter it sat on in a map label.
Q 18How many homes did Hawaii County report destroyed in the 2018 lower Puna eruption?
716
Two dozen vents fed lava rivers that reached the sea in three places and boiled away Green Lake, the state's largest natural freshwater lake.
Q 19What happened at Kīlauea's summit during the 2018 eruption?
The lava lake drained and the crater collapsed
At least one blast sent ash 30,000 feet up; some 60,000 earthquakes shook the summit and the park's Kīlauea section closed for months.
Q 20What appeared in the bottom of Halemaʻumaʻu in summer 2019, never before seen there in recorded history?
A water lake
It grew to 160 feet deep before the December 2020 eruption boiled it away and began refilling the crater with lava.
Q 24Which paved park path crosses the cinder-buried rainforest destroyed by the 1959 Kīlauea Iki fountains?
Devastation
Before the eruption the area was dense forest; the cone Puʻu Puaʻi built up beside it from the fountain fallout.
Q 25What is the Hawaiian name of the park's popular walk-through lava tube, long called Thurston Lava Tube?
Nāhuku
It reopened in February 2020 after the 2018 earthquakes; an undeveloped 1,100-foot stretch beyond the lit section is closed to the public.
Q 26How long is the Chain of Craters Road, which winds from the East Rift down to the coast?
19 miles
Lava has covered parts of it in 41 of the 53 years to 2018; its old link to Kalapana is now buried and usable only as an emergency escape route.
Q 27How big is Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park?
About 354,000 acres
Around 130,000 acres, including Mauna Loa's summit, were made wilderness in 1978.
Q 28The 2003 purchase of the Kahuku Ranch, Hawaii's largest land acquisition, enlarged the park by what share?
56%
The 115,788 acres cost $21.9 million from the estate of Samuel Mills Damon, with financing from The Nature Conservancy.
Q 29In which year did UNESCO list the park as a World Heritage Site?
1987
It had been made an International Biosphere Reserve in 1980, and in 2012 it appeared on an America the Beautiful quarter.
Q 30The park was depicted on a coin in 2012 as part of which US Mint series?
America the Beautiful Quarters
It was the 14th design in the series, which honoured a national site from every state and territory.