Redwood National Park Trivia
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48 free Redwood National Park trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Redwood National Park trivia quiz covers the northern California coast where the tallest trees on Earth grow, and the unusual partnership of one national park and three state parks that protects nearly half of all the old-growth coast redwood left in the world. It ranges across Hyperion and its rivals, the biology of a tree that drinks fog and shrugs off fire, Fern Canyon and its Jurassic Park cameo, the 37 miles of wild coast, Roosevelt elk and the earthquake-prone geology. There is plenty of history too: the Yurok, Tolowa and Chilula peoples, Jedediah Smith's 1828 trek, the Gold Rush logging boom, the Save the Redwoods League's 60-year race with the sawmills, Lyndon Johnson's 1968 park, Jimmy Carter's expensive 1978 expansion, and UNESCO World Heritage status in 1980. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one, so it works for a Highway 101 road-trip game or a serious park-nerd challenge. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. If you enjoy it, try our Sequoia, Yosemite and US National Parks quizzes next.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Since 2022, which giant scavenging bird has soared over Redwood National Park again after more than a century away?
California condor
California condor. The species was once down to just 22 individuals; captive breeding saved it, and a tribe-led programme has been releasing young condors in the park since 2022.
Q 02Coast redwoods are the world's tallest trees, but which close relative in the Sierra Nevada is the most massive?
Giant sequoia
Giant sequoia. It is shorter than a tall redwood but far bulkier in the trunk, and the two are different enough that botanists place them in separate genera.
Q 03Roughly what share of the original old-growth coast redwood forest is still standing today?
About 5 percent
About 5 percent. Nine-tenths had already been cut by the 1960s, barely a century after logging began, and nearly half of what survives stands inside Redwood National and State Parks.
Q 04Which president signed the bill creating Redwood National Park?
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson. The compromise he signed was built around three existing state parks and left most of the surrounding watershed open to clear-cutting for another ten years.
Q 05Redwood National Park's 1978 expansion took in miles of freshly clear-cut hillside, handing the Park Service which unusual long-term job?
Restoring the forest
Restoring the forest. The cut-over slopes along Redwood Creek were shedding soil into the stream, so the park has spent decades healing land that arrived already stripped.
Q 06With no taproot, what do a coast redwood's shallow roots do to keep it standing?
Interlock with nearby trees
Interlock with nearby trees. The roots run far out to the sides and intertwine with those of the trees around them, so a grove braces itself against wind and flood.
Q 07The Save the Redwoods League, founded in 1918, protected ancient groves mainly by doing what?
Buying the land
Buying the land. With private donations and matching state money it purchased more than 100,000 acres of redwood forest between 1920 and 1960 and turned them over as parks.
Q 08Which landscape architect's 1920s survey recommended the redwood areas California should protect as state parks?
Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.
Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. Son of the designer of New York's Central Park, he surveyed the whole state, and his shortlist of redwood areas steered the growth of its redwood parks for years afterwards.
Q 09What name was given to the world's tallest known living tree, found in Redwood National Park in 2006?
Hyperion
Hyperion. It stands deep in the forest with no trail to it, yet so many fans bushwhacked there, trampling the ground bare, that the park closed the surrounding area in 2022.
Q 10The world's tallest tree, a redwood about 380 feet high, would overtop which of these landmarks?
Statue of Liberty
Statue of Liberty. She stands about 305 feet from ground to torch, yet the park calls the record tree a let-down up close: its top cannot be seen from the forest floor.
Q 11How did a scientist confirm the record height of the world's tallest tree in 2006?
Climbing it with a tape
Climbing it with a tape. Botanist Stephen Sillett fired a line over a high limb with a crossbow, hauled himself to the top and dropped a measuring tape to the ground.
Q 12What penalty did Redwood National Park set in 2022 for anyone hiking to the world's tallest tree?
A $5,000 fine and jail
A $5,000 fine and jail. The maximum is six months inside, because visitors bushwhacking to the unmarked tree had trampled every fern around its base and left rubbish behind.
Q 13Roughly how old is the world's tallest tree, a coast redwood, estimated to be?
About 700 years
Q 21Which Prairie Creek Redwoods landmark stood in for a dinosaur-era jungle in The Lost World: Jurassic Park?
Fern Canyon
Fern Canyon. Its 50-foot walls are hung from top to bottom with ferns, a look prehistoric enough that documentary makers have also used it for the age of dinosaurs.
Q 22Which natural chemical, abundant in redwood bark and wood, keeps insects and rot at bay?
Tannin
Tannin. It makes the living tree almost free of disease and insect damage, and it is why redwood timber, slow to rot in any weather, was worth so much to the mills.
Q 23Which fur trapper led the first known European-American party through the redwoods in 1828?
Jedediah Smith
About 700 years. Estimates run from 600 to 800, which is young for a species that can pass 2,000, and it grew up on a slope where most of the old trees around it were cut.
Q 14The world's tallest tree, in Redwood National Park, is named after which kind of figure from Greek myth?
A Titan
A Titan. Its finders kept to the theme, giving two more record-height redwoods they found that same summer names taken from Greek myth as well.
Q 15During World War II, an early-warning radar station on the Redwood coast was disguised as what?
A farmhouse and barn
A farmhouse and barn. Built when an attack on the Pacific coast seemed possible, the cinderblock buildings had false roofs and windows so they passed for a working farm from the air or the road.
Q 16Coast redwoods take in about 40 percent of their yearly moisture from what?
Fog
Fog. It condenses on the needles and drips to the ground through the dry summers, and the trees can even absorb it straight through their leaves.
Q 17Why are coast redwoods so resistant to fire?
Thick bark with little resin
Thick bark with little resin. The bark can be a foot thick and holds little that burns, so a scorched redwood usually survives and can sprout new growth from its trunk.
Q 18The oldest coast redwoods are about 2,000 years old, but which western tree can live more than twice as long?
Bristlecone pine
Bristlecone pine. Some in the dry mountains of the West are close to 5,000 years old, so a redwood that sprouted under the Roman Empire is only middle-aged by comparison.
Q 19Which seabird flies inland to nest high on old-growth redwood branches in Redwood National and State Parks?
Marbled murrelet
Marbled murrelet. It lays a single egg on a broad limb high in an old tree, and its worst enemy there is the Steller's jay, drawn in greater numbers wherever people leave food.
Q 20Which large mammals graze in herds on the prairies and even the beaches of Redwood National and State Parks?
Roosevelt elk
Roosevelt elk. It is the largest elk in North America: bulls can weigh over 1,000 pounds, and during the autumn rut they have been known to charge hikers and even cars.
Jedediah Smith. He and nineteen companions forced their way through the redwood country to the coast, and a river and a state park there now carry his name.
Q 24Which Native nation, with about 55 villages along the Klamath River and the coast, was the Redwood area's most populous?
Yurok
Yurok. Their language, down at one point to a handful of elderly speakers, is being learned again by a new generation.
Q 25The coast redwood, the tallest tree on Earth, grows from a seed about the size of which of these?
A tomato seed
A tomato seed. The tree does not even depend on it: a redwood can also clone itself, sending up new trunks from its own stump or roots.
Q 26Which 1848 event brought the settlers and loggers who transformed the redwood coast?
The California Gold Rush
The California Gold Rush. Gold found on the Trinity River in 1850 drew thousands to the redwood coast, and the newcomers' hunger for lumber set off the logging of the redwoods.
Q 27The 1881 invention of what logging machine spawned the practice of clearcutting in the redwoods?
The steam donkey
Before that, teams of six or twelve oxen dragged logs out, and two men with a crosscut saw got through about a foot of trunk an hour.
Q 28In 1980 the United Nations gave the Redwood parks which status?
World Heritage Site
World Heritage Site. The listing recognised the largest unbroken stretch of ancient redwood forest left in the world, home to the tallest living things on Earth.
Q 29Which three tectonic plates meet at the Mendocino triple junction off the Redwood coast?
North American, Pacific and Gorda
North American, Pacific and Gorda. The small Gorda plate is squeezed by its two big neighbours as it slides beneath the continent, which is why this corner of the coast shakes so often.
Q 30Visitors on the beaches of Redwood National and State Parks are told to do what straight after a strong earthquake?
Seek higher ground
Seek higher ground. The parks tell beachgoers to know their quickest route to land 50 feet above the sea, because this is the most tsunami-prone coast in the lower 48 states.