Camp Trivia
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97 free Camp trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
40 free Camp trivia questions with answers. Camp trivia is its own category: part history, part outdoors know-how, part the folklore that only exists between a fire ring and a cabin bunk. This quiz covers all three. You will find the Connecticut school that ran the first organised camp in 1861, the Girl Scout cookbook that first printed a s'more recipe, and the reason marshmallows are named after a wetland weed. The campfire trivia half goes after the fire itself - tinder, fire rings, putting one out properly - plus the songs, the ghost stories, Smokey Bear's actual slogan and the seven Leave No Trace principles that took a decade of argument to settle on. Questions run from easy ones a first-year camper can take to expert-level detail on gear history and camp origins, and every answer is written against an encyclopaedic or official source with the sentence that proves it attached. Print it for a rainy cabin afternoon, a campfire quiz round, or the bus ride up.
30 of 97 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The first organised US summer camp is usually credited to a camp founded in 1861 in which state?
Connecticut
Connecticut is where teacher Frederick Gunn marched his pupils to the shore at Milford in 1861 to camp, fish and drill like the Civil War soldiers they expected to become.
Q 02Which 1980 horror film sends a group of young counsellors to reopen Camp Crystal Lake?
Friday the 13th
Friday the 13th has a killer who is not Jason: in the first film it is Mrs. Voorhees, avenging the son she believes drowned at the camp, and he only takes over in the sequels.
Q 03Camp Dudley, the oldest continually running US boys' camp, was started in 1885 by a volunteer from which organisation?
The YMCA
The YMCA asked volunteer Sumner Dudley to take some of its boys camping, the trip became a yearly fixture, and the camp took his name after he died in 1897.
Q 04Which book series sends its hero to a summer camp called Camp Half-Blood?
Percy Jackson
Percy Jackson began as bedtime stories: Rick Riordan made them up for his son Haley, who has ADHD and dyslexia, and gave his hero both.
Q 05What three things make up a s'more?
Toasted marshmallow, chocolate and graham crackers
Toasted marshmallow, chocolate and graham crackers: the hot marshmallow melts the chocolate and glues the sandwich shut, and the name is just 'some more' said fast.
Q 06The original marshmallow sweet was made from which part of the marsh-mallow plant?
The root
The root gave a sticky sap that set the original sweet; candy makers later swapped it out of the recipe, so most modern marshmallows contain none of the plant.
Q 07Which animal-derived ingredient gives most modern marshmallows their springy set?
Gelatin
Gelatin, boiled out of animal skin and bones, is why most marshmallows are off the menu for vegetarians, even though the sweet is named after a plant.
Q 08Which insect repellent, developed for the US Army in the 1940s, went on sale to the public in 1957?
DEET
DEET does not kill mosquitoes: it only repels them, apparently by making it hard for a biting insect to smell the person wearing it.
Q 09What is the safest place to build a campfire?
In an established fire ring
In an established fire ring the ground is already cleared and scorched, so the fire scars no new patch and sits clear of the tents, shrubs and low branches Smokey Bear warns about.
Q 10What is the correct way to put out a campfire?
Drown it, stir it and drown it again
Drown it, stir it and drown it again, then hold a hand over the ashes: Smokey Bear's rule is that a fire too hot to touch is too hot to leave.
Q 11In fire-building, what is 'tinder'?
Material thin enough to catch from a spark
Material thin enough to catch from a spark, such as dry grass or pine needles, burns only briefly, so its job is to light the finger-thick kindling that in turn lights the logs.
Q 12Which chemical in poison ivy sap causes the rash?
Urushiol
Urushiol is an oil that clings to clothes, garden tools and pet fur, so people can come out in the rash without ever touching the plant.
Q 13Poison ivy leaves grow in clusters of how many leaflets?
Three
Three glossy leaflets on every leaf are the constant, which is why hikers count leaflets: the plant itself can creep along the ground, stand as a shrub or climb as a vine.
Q 21Camp Fire Girls, founded in 1910, was created as the sister organisation to what?
The Boy Scouts of America
The Boy Scouts of America had only just launched when some of its own founders set up Camp Fire Girls so that girls had an outdoor movement too; the sister group has taken boys since 1975.
Q 22What are the cords called that run from a tent to pegs in the ground to hold it steady?
Guy ropes
Guy ropes have nothing to do with men called Guy: the word is an old sailors' term that comes from the French for a guide, because the rope guides and steadies its load.
Q 23Which tree's bark did Indigenous builders in North America's northern forests stretch over wooden frames to make light canoes?
Birch
Q 14Smokey Bear's original 1944 slogan promised that care would prevent what?
9 out of 10 forest fires
9 out of 10 forest fires still matches the campaign's line that people start nearly nine in ten such blazes, which is how its first slogan could promise so much from care alone.
Q 15In 2001, Smokey Bear's 'Only you can prevent forest fires' was updated to name what instead?
Wildfires
Wildfires replaced 'forest fires' after a rash of blazes in grassland and other country that is not forest, and to make clear Smokey has no quarrel with planned, prescribed burns.
Q 16What was Smokey doing in his first 1944 poster?
Pouring water on a campfire
Pouring water on a campfire, in jeans and a ranger's hat, was Smokey's debut; the job was open because Disney had lent Bambi to the fire-prevention campaign for only one year.
Q 17Which outdoor ethic's seven principles begin 'Plan ahead and prepare'?
Leave No Trace
Leave No Trace goes well beyond litter: one principle tells hikers to leave rocks, plants and historic objects where they lie, so even a pocketed arrowhead breaks the code.
Q 18Which campfire spiritual's title do US politicians use as sarcastic shorthand for unrealistic harmony?
Kum ba yah
Kum ba yah, usually read as 'come by here', began as a plea for God's help, caught on a wax cylinder from a Georgia man's singing in the 1920s, decades before the folk revival made it a campfire singalong.
Q 19Which classic knot makes a fixed, slip-proof loop at a rope's end?
Bowline
Bowline loops neither slip nor bind under load yet untie easily once it is off, which is why sailors, climbers and rescue teams all use the knot.
Q 20Where was the first experimental Scout camp held, in 1907?
Brownsea Island
Brownsea Island, in Poole Harbour, let Baden-Powell try his ideas on boys from very different social backgrounds before he finished Scouting for Boys, the book that launched the movement.
Birch bark made a hull light enough to carry over the portages between lakes, which is why the fur trade's voyageurs took up the design wholesale.
Q 24Which term for a wasteful project began as the name of a braided leather cord made and worn by Scouts?
Boondoggle
Boondoggle turned sour in 1935, when critics learned that New Deal relief money was paying to teach the jobless handicrafts such as braiding leather.
Q 25Which mosquitoes bite people?
Only the females
Every mosquito drinks nectar; only the females have mouthparts built to pierce skin, and that is how diseases move.
Q 26Which stage of a mosquito's life comes between the larva and the flying adult?
Pupa
Pupa: a mosquito spends it in the water without feeding at all, floating at the surface until the winged adult splits the case and flies off.
Q 27A Dutch oven used over coals is usually made of what?
Seasoned cast iron
Seasoned cast iron pots bake like an oven thanks to two additions: legs that stand the pot over the coals and a rimmed lid that holds more coals on top, so heat comes from above and below.
Q 28Which director's 2012 film Moonrise Kingdom follows a 12-year-old Khaki Scout who runs away from Camp Ivanhoe?
Wes Anderson
Wes Anderson has the boy slip away to meet his pen pal, and with a violent storm bearing down on their New England island, the scoutmaster and half the adults turn out to search.
Q 29Which 1990s Nickelodeon series had the Midnight Society telling scary stories around a campfire?
Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Are You Afraid of the Dark? felt like an all-American camp-out, but the woods were Canadian: the series was filmed mainly in Montreal with a Quebec production company.
Q 30Which 2001 cult comedy is set on the last day of camp in 1981?
Wet Hot American Summer
Wet Hot American Summer came back on Netflix in 2015 as a prequel whose joke was the casting: the original actors, 14 years older, played even younger versions of their characters.