100 free Yosemite National Park trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Yosemite National Park trivia quiz covers the granite valley in California's Sierra Nevada that gave the world the very idea of a national park. It ranges across Half Dome and its cables, El Capitan and the Nose, Yosemite Falls, Bridalveil and the February 'firefall' glow on Horsetail Fall, the giant sequoias of the Mariposa Grove, Tuolumne Meadows and Tioga Pass, the Ahwahnee Hotel and the bears that once broke into cars. There is plenty of history too: the Ahwahneechee and the Mariposa Battalion of 1851, Galen Clark and Lincoln's 1864 grant, John Muir's glaciers-not-earthquakes theory and his 1903 camping trip with Theodore Roosevelt, the Buffalo Soldiers who patrolled the park, the flooding of Hetch Hetchy, the first female ranger, the Firefall from Glacier Point and the fall of the Wawona Tunnel Tree. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one, so it works for a Tunnel View picnic 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, Grand Canyon and US National Parks quizzes next.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Yosemite National Park is in which U.S. state?
California
It spreads across four counties in the central Sierra Nevada.
Q 02Which president signed the 1864 Yosemite Grant, the first US land set aside for preservation?
Abraham Lincoln
He signed it in the middle of the Civil War, and it set the precedent for Yellowstone in 1872.
Q 03Under the 1864 grant, the valley and the big sequoia grove were handed to whom to manage as a park?
The State of California
The state kept the valley until 1906, when Roosevelt signed a bill returning it to federal control.
Q 04In what year did Congress create Yosemite National Park after a naturalist's campaign?
1890
Century Magazine editor Robert Underwood Johnson was Muir's key ally in the lobbying.
Q 05Which Scottish-born naturalist led the campaign for the 1890 park and co-founded the Sierra Club?
John Muir
He was also among the first to argue, against the state geologist, that glaciers rather than earthquakes carved the valley.
Q 06Which president camped with Muir near Glacier Point for three days in May 1903?
Theodore Roosevelt
Muir talked him into taking the valley and grove back from the state, which he did by signing a bill in 1906.
Q 07Who found the park's biggest sequoia grove in 1857 and became the Yosemite Grant's first guardian?
Galen Clark
He and Milton Mann named the grove for Mariposa County; it draws about a million visitors a year.
Q 08Which landmark, rising 4,800 feet above the valley floor, is the park's most famous?
Half Dome
A state geologist called it 'perfectly inaccessible' in the 1870s, but a trail builder reached the top in October 1875 using drilled eye bolts.
Q 09Who first climbed the park's famous dome in October 1875 by drilling iron eye bolts into the rock?
George Anderson
He had first tried smearing pine pitch on his boots for grip; Muir followed him up within weeks.
Q 10Hikers finish the trail up the park's famous dome by hauling themselves up the final 400 feet using what?
A pair of steel cables
Rangers raise them on poles in late May and take them down in early October; permits have been capped at 300 a day since 2010.
Q 11Since 2010, how many cable permits for the famous dome are issued per day?
300
More than 70,000 people applied in the 2022 lotteries.
Q 12Which trio made the first ascent of Half Dome's northwest face in 1957, the first Grade VI climb in the US?
Royal Robbins, Mike Sherrick and Jerry Gallwas
Their five-day epic route was free-soloed by Alex Honnold in 2008.
Q 13Which 3,000-foot monolith on the valley's north side is the world's most famous big-wall site?
El Capitan
Its name is Spanish for 'the Captain', and laid-off park staff hung a giant upside-down flag from it in 2025.
Q 21Which grand valley hotel, opened in 1927, inspired the Overlook Hotel's interiors in The Shining?
The Ahwahnee
It is a National Historic Landmark and hosts a famous Christmas pageant that Ansel Adams ran from 1929 to 1973.
Q 22Why was the grand valley hotel temporarily renamed the 'Majestic Yosemite Hotel' from 2016 to 2019?
A trademark dispute with the outgoing concessionaire
Delaware North claimed it owned the name; the dispute was settled and the name restored in 2019.
Q 23Which stand of sequoias near Wawona is the park's largest, with several hundred mature trees?
Mariposa Grove
Q 14What is the 3,000-foot monolith's most famous climbing route, up the prow between its faces?
The Nose
Warren Harding, Wayne Merry and George Whitmore first climbed it in 1958 over 47 days of siege tactics spread across 18 months.
Q 15Roughly how many days of climbing did the first ascent of the Nose take in 1958?
47
The fixed manila ropes hung on the wall for 18 months and sometimes rotted through.
Q 16Which married couple free-climbed the Nose together in October 2005?
Tommy Caldwell and Beth Rodden
Two days later Caldwell went back and freed it in under 12 hours.
Q 17Which waterfall in the valley is the fourth tallest in North America at 2,425 feet?
Yosemite Falls
Its upper plunge alone drops 1,430 feet, and the flow peaks in late spring.
Q 18Which low-volume valley waterfall has the highest single vertical drop in the park, 1,612 feet?
Ribbon Fall
Yosemite Falls is taller overall but breaks into three sections and six drops.
Q 19Which small waterfall on the great monolith's eastern edge glows orange at sunset for a few February evenings?
Horsetail Fall
It needs a clear sky and enough snowmelt; the natural show echoes the man-made Firefall of old.
Q 20What was the Yosemite Firefall, ended in 1968?
Burning embers pushed off Glacier Point each night
Camp Curry founder David Curry would bellow 'Let the fire fall!' at 9 pm; NPS director George Hartzog killed it because it was unnatural and the crowds trampled the meadows.
The park's other two groves have only about 25 and 20 trees each.
Q 24What happened to the Wawona Tunnel Tree, the sequoia carriages drove through since 1881?
It fell under heavy snow in 1969
It was about 2,100 years old and 234 feet tall; the tunnel had weakened it for good.
Q 25Which valley in the park's northwest was dammed in 1923 to supply water to San Francisco, over Muir's opposition?
Hetch Hetchy
The 1913 Raker Act allowed it, and water began flowing 167 miles to the city in 1934.
Q 26Which 1913 act of Congress authorised flooding the valley in the park's northwest?
Raker Act
Gifford Pinchot backed the dam; Muir and the Sierra Club fought it for seven years and lost.
Q 27Which river drains the entire northern part of the park?
Tuolumne
Both it and the river through the main valley are federal Wild and Scenic Rivers.
Q 28Which river flows through Yosemite Valley itself?
Merced
Ice Age glaciers turned its V-shaped river canyon into the U-shaped valley of today.
Q 29What is the highest point in the park, at about 13,120 feet?
Mount Lyell
Its glacier is the biggest left in the park, but it and the Maclure Glacier are expected to vanish.
Q 30Which State Route 120 pass is the park's eastern gate and the highest highway pass in the Sierra?
Tioga
At 9,945 feet it normally shuts from late October to late May under snow.