National Parks
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170 free National Parks trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
70 free National Parks trivia questions with answers. Explore the natural beauty and rich history of America's National Parks with our engaging trivia quiz. From Yellowstone to the Grand Canyon, discover how much you really know about these protected treasures. Put your expertise to the test and see if you can ace this comprehensive National Parks challenge!
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Q 01Which national park surrounds the deepest lake in the United States?
Crater Lake
Crater Lake in Oregon fills the basin left when a volcano collapsed about 7,700 years ago; no rivers flow in or out, so its water comes only from rain and snow.
Q 02Who policed Yellowstone for three decades before rangers took over?
U.S. Army
The U.S. Army sent cavalry in 1886 because the park's civilian superintendents could not stop poachers and souvenir hunters; soldiers ran Yellowstone from Fort Yellowstone until 1918.
Q 03Which is the smallest U.S. national park by area?
Gateway Arch
Gateway Arch in St. Louis became a national park against the Park Service's own advice: its representative told the Senate that so small a city site should be a national monument instead.
Q 04Which photographer became famous for black-and-white images of America's national parks?
Ansel Adams
Ansel Adams took his first Yosemite pictures at 14, on a 1916 family trip, with a Kodak Brownie box camera his parents had given him; the park stayed his chief inspiration for life.
Q 05Which California national park contains the General Sherman Tree, the largest tree on Earth by volume?
Sequoia
Sequoia National Park crews wrapped the base of the General Sherman Tree in protective foil in 2021, when the KNP Complex wildfire burned towards its grove, the Giant Forest.
Q 06Which president signed the 1872 act that created the first U.S. national park?
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant signed the act on March 1, 1872, after an 1871 survey brought back photographs and paintings of the region's geysers and canyons that caught the imagination of Congress.
Q 07Which park became the 63rd U.S. national park in December 2020?
New River Gorge
New River Gorge in West Virginia had been a national river since 1978; in the upgrade less than a tenth became national park, and the rest stayed open to hunters as a national preserve.
Q 08Which national park is the largest by area in the United States?
Wrangell-St. Elias
Wrangell-St. Elias in Alaska covers 13.2 million acres; it was first protected as a national monument, by presidential proclamation, while Congress was still arguing over Alaska's public lands.
Q 09Which national park is the largest by area in the contiguous United States?
Death Valley
Death Valley is also the hottest and driest national park, yet rare rainstorms can carpet its floor with wildflowers, and winter snow frosts the peaks around it.
Q 10The Cuyahoga River, which famously caught fire in 1969, now flows through a national park in which state?
Ohio
Ohio's Cuyahoga Valley became a national recreation area in 1974, after the 1969 river fire had become a symbol of pollution and helped spur clean-water laws; it was made a national park in 2000.
Q 11Which South Dakota national park is known for boxwork, a rare honeycomb of thin calcite fins?
Wind Cave
Wind Cave is named for the wind at its entrance: air rushes in or out of the small natural opening whenever the pressure outside changes, as if the cave were breathing.
Q 12Which New England park is the oldest national park east of the Mississippi River?
Acadia
Acadia, in Maine, was pieced together from land given by private donors; it became Lafayette National Park in 1919 and took its present name in 1929.
Q 13Which national park protects the world's longest known cave system?
Mammoth Cave
Mammoth Cave keeps growing on paper as surveyors connect new passages; the enslaved guide Stephen Bishop explored much of it and drew a celebrated map from memory in 1842.
Q 21Which national park is known for its dramatic cliff dwellings built by ancient Pueblo people?
Mesa Verde
Mesa Verde's cliff dwellings were lived in for only about a century before their builders migrated south, leaving them empty by about 1300.
Q 22Which national park is famous for Angels Landing and the river hike through The Narrows?
Zion
Zion Canyon was cut by the Virgin River, a modest stream that drops so steeply off the plateau that its floods carry away sand and boulders and keep deepening the sandstone gorge.
Q 23Which national park is an archipelago of seven islands 70 miles west of Key West, Florida?
Dry Tortugas
Dry Tortugas is almost all open water around seven small keys; Ponce de León named them in 1513 for their sea turtles, and 'Dry' is said to have been added because they have no fresh water.
Q 14What national park is famous for its iconic granite formations like El Capitan and Half Dome?
Yosemite
Yosemite's Half Dome was declared 'perfectly inaccessible' in an 1865 survey report, yet George Anderson reached the top in 1875 by drilling iron eyebolts into the granite.
Q 15Which Arkansas national park was first set aside as a federal reservation in 1832, four decades before the first national park?
Hot Springs
Hot Springs was reserved by Congress in 1832, long before the idea of a national park existed, and grew into a busy bathhouse resort; it was renamed a national park only in 1921.
Q 16Which national park did George Bird Grinnell dub the 'Crown of the Continent' in 1901?
Glacier
Glacier National Park owes much to George Bird Grinnell, who gave the region that nickname in a 1901 description and lobbied until Congress made it a park in 1910.
Q 17Which Florida national park is known for vast wetlands, alligators and panthers?
Everglades
Everglades depends on a slow flow of fresh water that was increasingly diverted during the 20th century to serve South Florida's growth; Congress approved a plan to restore it in 2000.
Q 18Which national park is primarily known for its namesake canyon, carved by the Colorado River?
Grand Canyon
Grand Canyon is far younger than its rocks: the river is thought to have begun cutting it only 5 to 6 million years ago, while the rocks at the bottom are close to 2 billion years old.
Q 19Which Washington national park combines rugged mountains, temperate rainforest and coastline?
Olympic
Olympic's Hoh Rain Forest averages about 140 inches of precipitation a year, because Pacific storms drop their moisture on the mountains and leave the park's eastern side in a rain shadow.
Q 20Which national park drew the most visitors in 2024?
Great Smoky Mountains
Great Smoky Mountains draws around 12 million visits a year; it charges no entrance fee, and a public highway runs through it between Tennessee and North Carolina.
Q 24Which national park encompasses both Kīlauea and Mauna Loa?
Hawaii Volcanoes
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park spans both summits; Kīlauea's 2018 eruption closed the summit area for months, and Mauna Loa is the largest active volcano on Earth.
Q 25Which Utah national park is packed with hoodoos, rock spires carved by frost and rain?
Bryce Canyon
Bryce Canyon is not a canyon at all but a series of natural amphitheatres; the Paiute told of hoodoos as 'Legend People' turned to stone by Coyote.
Q 26Which national park hosts evening bat-flight viewings from its natural cave entrance?
Carlsbad Caverns
Carlsbad Caverns' first known explorer was a teenager, Jim White, who climbed down around 1898 on a homemade wire ladder and went on to name many of its rooms.
Q 27Which national park is an island archipelago off Southern California, reachable only by boat or plane?
Channel Islands
Channel Islands National Park lies off the coast of Southern California, reachable only by boat or plane, and its isolation produced endemic species such as the island fox.
Q 28Which Alaska national park is known for giant sand dunes crossed by migrating caribou herds?
Kobuk Valley
Kobuk Valley holds the largest active sand dunes in the Arctic, and caribou swim its river at Onion Portage, where people have hunted them for 9,000 years; no roads lead in, so visitors arrive by air.
Q 29Which Alaska national park did John Muir first explore with Tlingit guides in 1879?
Glacier Bay
Glacier Bay drew John Muir in 1879, guided by Tlingit men; his enthusiastic writings made it a tourist attraction by the late 1880s, and Muir Glacier bears his name.
Q 30Which national park offers Blue Ridge waterfalls and overlooks just 75 miles from Washington, D.C.?
Shenandoah
Shenandoah was assembled in the 1930s from private farms and homesteads that Virginia bought or condemned; at least 500 mountain families were moved out to make the park.