Hawaii Volcanoes National Park Trivia
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46 free Hawaii Volcanoes National Park trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 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 46 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What geologic feature built the volcanoes of Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park and the rest of the island chain?
A hotspot
A hotspot: the Pacific Plate slowly carries each volcano northwest away from it, so the islands grow older toward Kauaʻi and the Big Island's are youngest.
Q 02What is the name Kīlauea usually translated as, a nod to its frequent eruptions?
Much spreading
Much spreading, or spewing: lava pours out so often that flows younger than 1,000 years cover about 90 percent of its surface.
Q 03Mauna Loa's name translates as what?
Long mountain
Long mountain: its high-volume lava flows travel long distances, building a broad shield that makes up more than half of the island of Hawaiʻi.
Q 04Mauna Loa's summit falls roughly 120 feet short of which neighbouring volcano's summit?
Mauna Kea
Mauna Kea: yet measured from its base on the seafloor, Mauna Loa rises about 30,000 feet, more than Everest stands above sea level.
Q 05Kīlauea's summit crater Halemaʻumaʻu is traditionally regarded as the home of which deity?
Pele
Pele: in 1824 High Chiefess Kapiʻolani defied her at Kīlauea, eating berries sacred to the goddess without first offering her any.
Q 06When Hawaii National Park was created in 1916, it also included which volcano on another island?
Haleakalā
Haleakalā on Maui stayed part of Hawaii National Park until 1961, when Congress made it a separate park and the Big Island section was renamed.
Q 07Which president signed the bill creating Hawaii National Park, weeks before signing the act that founded the National Park Service?
Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson signed it on August 1, 1916, nine years after the territory treated fifty members of Congress to a Kīlauea dinner cooked over lava vents.
Q 08Which threatened bird, Hawaii's state bird, is often seen along the roads of Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park?
Nēnē
Nēnē: hunting and introduced predators left only a few dozen of these geese by the mid-20th century, before captive breeding helped bring them back.
Q 09Which famous troops built a trail from Kīlauea to Mauna Loa's summit in 1915?
Buffalo Soldiers
Buffalo Soldiers: men of the all-Black 25th Infantry broke up lava with 12-pound hammers and carried fill in gunny sacks on their backs.
Q 10Which future World War II general helped plan the 1935 bombing of a Mauna Loa lava flow heading for Hilo?
George S. Patton
George S. Patton: Army planes dropped the bombs that December, but many geologists doubt they did much, since the flow waned over days rather than stopping.
Q 11What is the only hotel located inside Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park?
Volcano House
Volcano House: after a kitchen fire burned the hotel to the ground in 1940, a new building on the crater rim opened the next year.
Q 12Which famous author visited Kīlauea in 1866 while reporting from Hawaii for a California newspaper?
Mark Twain
Mark Twain: back in San Francisco his island letters became the basis of his first public lecture, and he later retold the volcano visit in Roughing It.
Q 13Which traces in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park are traditionally linked to warriors caught in Kīlauea's explosive 1790 eruption?
Footprints in hardened ash
Q 21Mauna Loa's 2022 eruption buried the road to a nearby observatory famous for tracking what?
Carbon dioxide in the air
Carbon dioxide in the air: its measurements began in 1958 and form the Keeling Curve, the record that shows the gas climbing year after year.
Q 22Why did US officials keep Mauna Loa's April 1942 eruption out of the news?
Its glow could guide enemy bombers
Its glow could guide enemy bombers: yet when its lava threatened the ʻOlaʻa flume, the Army Air Force dropped its own bombs on the flow, with limited success.
Q 23When scientists drilled into Kīlauea Iki's 1959 lava lake, what did they hit just nine feet down?
Footprints in hardened ash: Ruy Finch came upon them purely by accident in 1919, while hiking out to study a new eruption.
Q 14Who founded the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and directed it from 1912 to 1940?
Thomas Jaggar
Thomas Jaggar: an MIT geology professor, he had investigated the 1902 Mont Pelée disaster in Martinique before choosing Kīlauea for a permanent observatory.
Q 15Which federal agency runs the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory?
US Geological Survey
US Geological Survey: it first took charge in 1924, but the National Park Service ran the observatory from 1935 until the Survey returned in 1947.
Q 16Which coastal community, cherished for its black sand beaches, did Kīlauea's long east rift eruption bury in 1990?
Kalapana
Kalapana: lava crept into the community from March 1990, and by the end of that year about 100 homes lay buried.
Q 17What is the name of the cinder cone that grew on Kīlauea's east rift during the 1983-2018 eruption?
Puʻu ʻŌʻō
Puʻu ʻŌʻō: lava from its eruption reached the sea and added hundreds of acres of new land to the island.
Q 18In May 2018, lava fissures broke out inside which Puna subdivision, forcing residents to flee?
Leilani Estates
Leilani Estates: lava from its fissures ran all the way to the sea at Kapoho Bay, and Hawaii County counted 716 homes destroyed.
Q 19What happened at Kīlauea's summit during the 2018 eruption?
The lava lake drained and the crater collapsed
The lava lake drained and the crater collapsed: 62 collapse events dropped the ground by more than 1,600 feet, and the summit area stayed closed for months.
Q 20What appeared at the bottom of Kīlauea's Halemaʻumaʻu crater in summer 2019, for the first time in recorded history?
A water lake
A water lake: it kept rising for more than a year, until a December 2020 eruption boiled it away and began refilling the crater with lava.
Molten rock
Molten rock: red-hot lava oozed up the borehole four months after the eruption, and the lake did not fully solidify until the mid-1990s.
Q 24The walk-through lava tube Nāhuku in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park has long carried which family's name?
Thurston
Thurston: Lorrin Thurston, the newspaper publisher who campaigned for the park, explored the tube in 1913, and it was named after him.
Q 25Why are kīpuka like Kīpukapuaulu in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park havens for rare species?
Lava flows ring and isolate them
Lava flows ring and isolate them: these islands of older forest shelter native species and later seed new growth on the flows around them.
Q 26Which endangered animal found in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park is Hawaii's only native land mammal?
Hawaiian hoary bat
Hawaiian hoary bat: its ancestors flew across the open Pacific from the mainland to reach the islands.
Q 27Before Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park bought its vast Kahuku unit in 2003, what was the land?
A cattle ranch
A cattle ranch: buying the roughly 116,000 acres of Kahuku Ranch on Mauna Loa's slopes enlarged the park by more than half.
Q 28In 1987, Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park became the first place in Hawaii to earn which international status?
World Heritage Site
World Heritage Site: UNESCO cited the park as a unique example of islands being built by ongoing volcanic activity.
Q 29Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park appeared on a 2012 coin in which US Mint series?
America the Beautiful Quarters
America the Beautiful Quarters: a 2008 act of Congress set up the series to honour a national park or site in every state, DC and territory.
Q 30What arid area on Kīlauea's southwest side contrasts with the rainforests of Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park?
Kaʻū Desert
Kaʻū Desert: trade winds carry the volcano's sulphur dioxide over it, turning rain into acid that stunts plants, though it is not a true desert.