Yellowstone
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93 free Yellowstone trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
89 free Yellowstone trivia questions with answers. Yellowstone became the world's first national park in 1872, and these questions cover its geysers, wildlife, history and geology, with a source behind every answer. Looking for the Dutton family instead? This page is about the park, not the TV series.
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Q 01Which California park, given to the state in 1864, was Congress's model for Yellowstone?
Yosemite
Yosemite went to California as a state park in 1864; Yellowstone lay in territories, with no state to take it, which may be why it became the first national park instead.
Q 02Which U.S. President signed the act that established Yellowstone as a national park?
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant signed the act on March 1, 1872, closing the land to settlement and sale, a break from the usual policy of passing public land into private hands.
Q 03Approximately 96 percent of Yellowstone National Park's land area lies within which US state?
Wyoming
Wyoming holds about 96 percent of the park, yet the park is older than the state: Wyoming was a territory in 1872 and joined the Union only in 1890.
Q 04Which cartoon bear raids picnic baskets in Jellystone Park, a spoof of Yellowstone?
Yogi Bear
Yogi Bear arrived on television in 1958, when real Yellowstone bears still begged for food along the roads; the park later stamped out feeding, and roadside bears became rare.
Q 05What kind of volcanic system underlies Yellowstone National Park?
Supervolcano
Yellowstone sits on a supervolcano whose three giant eruptions shaped the region, yet its most recent eruption of any kind was a lava flow about 70,000 years ago.
Q 06Which Yellowstone feature is the world's third-largest of its kind, behind Frying Pan Lake and Boiling Lake?
Grand Prismatic Spring
Grand Prismatic Spring was named in 1871 for its rainbow rings; its centre looks deep blue because sunlight entering deep, clear water has its blue light scattered back the most.
Q 07Yellowstone holds over half the world's geysers, a word taken from Geysir in which country?
Iceland
Iceland's Geysir, whose name comes from an Old Norse word for 'to gush', named every geyser on Earth; it now erupts only rarely, while Yellowstone has more than 500 active ones.
Q 08Harry Yount, hired in 1880 to stop poaching in Yellowstone, is remembered as the first what?
National park ranger
National park ranger is the title history gave him, though Yount quit after 14 months, reporting that one gamekeeper was not enough and urging a small police force instead.
Q 09The return of wolves to Yellowstone in 1995 is often cited as an example of which ecological effect?
Trophic cascade
Trophic cascade is the term: with wolves back, elk numbers fell and willows and aspen regrew in places, though scientists still argue over how much of that the wolves caused.
Q 10What is the highest point in Yellowstone National Park?
Eagle Peak
Eagle Peak, on the park's remote southeastern boundary, tops 11,350 feet; it stands in roadless backcountry, so the park's highest summit is one that few visitors ever reach.
Q 11Which Yellowstone feature is a broad terraced hillside of travertine next to Fort Yellowstone?
Mammoth Hot Springs
Mammoth Hot Springs is built of travertine: hot water rising through limestone dissolves it, then lays the mineral down again at the surface, adding to the terraces as it cools.
Q 12Which organization ran Yellowstone for about 30 years from 1886, before the National Park Service took over?
U.S. Army
The U.S. Army was called in after Congress refused to fund the park's civilian managers in 1886; cavalry troopers then patrolled against poachers and vandals for three decades.
Q 13Which island group joined Yellowstone among the first twelve World Heritage Sites in 1978?
The Galápagos
Q 21Which fish-eating raptor builds stick nests on the rock pinnacles of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone?
Osprey
Ospreys build their stick nests on the canyon's pinnacles and live almost entirely on fish; their numbers crashed in the DDT era and rebounded once the pesticide was banned.
Q 22Nathaniel Langford ran Yellowstone as its first superintendent for five years without ever being given what?
A salary
A salary was never voted by Congress, so Langford had to earn his living elsewhere and entered the park only twice in his five years in charge.
Q 23Roughly how many waterfalls at least 15 feet high does Yellowstone contain?
About 290
About 290 waterfalls of 15 feet or more are counted in the park; the best known stand where the Yellowstone River runs off hard lava onto softer rock, which wears away faster and leaves a drop.
The Galápagos and Yellowstone both made UNESCO's first list of twelve in 1978, and both later spent years on its 'in danger' register before being cleared.
Q 14Why does water boil at about 199°F rather than 212°F in Yellowstone's geyser basins?
Lower air pressure
Lower air pressure is the reason: most of the park sits on a plateau around 8,000 feet up, where thinner air lets water boil about 13 degrees sooner than at sea level.
Q 15What finally halted the 1988 fires that burned about a third of Yellowstone?
Snowfall
Snowfall, a quarter of an inch on September 11, did what thousands of firefighters and $120 million could not, arriving with rain and colder weather to stop the fires' advance.
Q 16Which tree, the most common in Yellowstone, bears some cones that stay sealed until the heat of a fire opens them?
Lodgepole pine
Lodgepole pine makes up about 80 percent of the park's forest; resin seals some of its cones for years, until a fire's heat melts it and frees the seeds.
Q 17What did the land above Yellowstone's magma chamber do once a giant eruption emptied it?
Collapsed inward
It collapsed inward more than 600,000 years ago, forming the Yellowstone Caldera; lava flows have since filled much of it in, burying parts of the rim.
Q 18What gives Yellowstone's largest hot spring its rainbow rings of red, orange, yellow and green?
Heat-loving microbes
Heat-loving microbes grow in mats around the pool, and different kinds thrive at different temperatures, so each ring of colour marks a band of cooler water farther from the centre.
Q 19Which of these mountain ranges forms the eastern boundary of Yellowstone National Park?
Absaroka Range
The Absaroka Range walls in the park's east side, so the road from the East Entrance has to climb over a high mountain pass, which snow closes to cars for about half the year.
Q 20At nearly 3,500 square miles, Yellowstone is larger than either of which two US states?
Rhode Island and Delaware
Rhode Island and Delaware are the only states smaller than the park; by land area, the two of them together would still fit inside its borders.
Q 24Which Yellowstone feature is the world’s tallest active geyser, throwing water 300 to 400 feet?
Steamboat
Steamboat can throw water more than 300 feet, but nobody can say when: gaps between its major eruptions have run from three days to 50 years, and it burst back into frequent action in 2018.
Q 25Which biome is the most widespread in Yellowstone National Park?
Subalpine forest
Subalpine forest is the most abundant biome because so much of the park lies on a high plateau, around 8,000 feet above sea level, where cold-hardy conifers do best.
Q 26Yellowstone's largest eruption dwarfed which volcano's 1980 blast thousands of times over?
Mount St. Helens
Mount St. Helens is the usual yardstick: the first of Yellowstone's three giant eruptions, about 2.1 million years ago, threw out thousands of times as much material, and its ash fell far across the central United States.
Q 27Yellowstone has over 10,000 hydrothermal features; where does the water that feeds them come from?
Rain and snowmelt
Rain and snowmelt seep deep into the rock, are superheated by the magma system below, and rise again as the hot springs, geysers and steam vents of the park.
Q 28Which president signed the Lacey Act of 1894, protecting Yellowstone's wildlife?
Grover Cleveland
Grover Cleveland signed the act in May 1894, early in his second term, weeks after a poaching scandal inside the park had been written up in the national press.
Q 29Which tectonic plate has been drifting southwest over the stationary Yellowstone hotspot?
North American Plate
The North American Plate drifts southwest over the fixed plume, so a trail of older, extinct calderas runs back across the Snake River Plain toward Nevada and Oregon.
Q 30Which Yellowstone valley, along the river of the same name, is the best-known place to see grizzlies and wolves?
Lamar
Lamar Valley is often called America's Serengeti for its herds and predators; the wolves brought back in 1995 were first held in pens at three sites along the valley.