Yellowstone Park Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

Trivia quiz questions with answers about Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone Park Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

What is Yellowstone National Park?
A: Yellowstone National Park is an American national park located in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.

It was established by whom?
A: The U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872.

Yellowstone was the first “what”, in the U.S. ?
A: National park.

It is also widely held to be the first national park in the what?
A: The world.

The park is known for its wildlife and its many what?
A: Geothermal features, especially Old Faithful geyser, one of its most popular features.

It has many types of ecosystems, but the subalpine forest is the most what?
A: Abundant.

Aside from visits by mountain men during the early-to-mid-19th century, organized exploration did not begin until when?
A: The late 1860s.

Management and control of the park originally fell under the jurisdiction of who?
A: The Secretary of the Interior, the first being Columbus Delano.

However, the U.S. Army was subsequently commissioned to oversee management of Yellowstone for what period?
A: A 30-year period between 1886 and 1916.

In 1917, administration of the park was transferred to whom?
A: The National Park Service, which had been created the previous year.

Yellowstone National Park spans how many square miles?
A: 3,468.4 square miles.

Yellowstone Lake is one of the largest high-elevation lakes where?
A: In North America and is centered over the Yellowstone Caldera.

What is the Yellowstone Caldera?
A: The largest supervolcano on the continent.

The caldera is considered what?
A: An active volcano.

It has erupted with tremendous force several times in the last what?
A: Two million years.

Half How much of the world's geysers and hydrothermal features are in Yellowstone?
A: Half.

Lava flows and rocks from volcanic eruptions cover what?
A: Most of the land area of Yellowstone.

What was Yellowstone named in 1978?
A: Yellowstone was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Yellowstone Park is the largest and most famous megafauna location where?
A: In the contiguous United States.

The Yellowstone Park bison herd is the oldest and largest public bison herd where?
A: In the United States.

The park contains the headwaters of what river?
A: Yellowstone River, from which it takes its historical name.

It is commonly believed that the river was named for what?
A: The yellow rocks seen in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

The human history of the park begins how many years ago?
A: At least 11,000 years ago when Native Americans began to hunt and fish in the region.

What was found during the construction of the post office in Gardiner, Montana, in the 1950s?
A: An obsidian projectile point of Clovis origin.

How old was It?
A: Approximately 11,000 years.

These Paleo-Indians, of the Clovis culture, used the significant amounts of obsidian found in the park to do what?
A: To make cutting tools and weapons.

Arrowheads made of Yellowstone obsidian have been found as far away as what?
A: The Mississippi Valley, indicating that a regular obsidian trade existed between local tribes and tribes farther east.

By the time white explorers first entered the region during the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805, they encountered what Indian tribes?
A: The Nez Perce, Crow, and Shoshone tribes.

In 1806, John Colter, a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, left to do what?
A: Join a group of fur trappers.

After splitting up with the other trappers in 1807, Colter passed through what?
A: A portion of what later became the park, during the winter of 1807–1808.

He observed at least one what?
A: Geothermal area in the northeastern section of the park, near Tower Fall.

After surviving wounds he suffered in a battle with members of the Crow and Blackfoot tribes in 1809, Colter described a place of what?
A: "Fire and brimstone" that most people dismissed as delirium.

Over the next 40 years, numerous reports from mountain men and trappers told of boiling mud, steaming rivers, and petrified trees, yet most of these reports were believed at the time to be what?
A: Myth.

After an 1856 exploration, mountain man Jim Bridger reported observing what?
A: Boiling springs, spouting water, and a mountain of glass and yellow rock.

These reports were largely ignored because Bridger was what?
A: A known "spinner of yarns".

What was the first detailed expedition to the Yellowstone area?
A: The Cook–Folsom–Peterson Expedition of 1869, which consisted of three privately funded explorers.

The Folsom party followed the Yellowstone River to where?
A: Yellowstone Lake.

The members of the Folsom party kept a journal and based on the information it reported, a party of Montana residents did what?
A: They organized the Washburn–Langford–Doane Expedition in 1870.

It was headed by whom?
A: The surveyor-general of Montana Henry Washburn, and included Nathaniel P. Langford (who later became known as "National Park" Langford) and a U.S. Army detachment commanded by Lt. Gustavus Doane.

The expedition spent about a month doing what?
A: Exploring the region, collecting specimens and naming sites of interest.

A Montana writer and lawyer named Cornelius Hedges, who had been a member of the Washburn expedition, proposed that the region should be what?
A: Set aside and protected as a national park.

He wrote detailed articles about his observations for what?
A: The Helena Herald newspaper between 1870 and 1871.

Hedges essentially restated comments made in October 1865 by whom?
A: Acting Montana Territorial Governor Thomas Francis Meagher, who had previously commented that the region should be protected.

In 1871, eleven years after his failed first effort, who was finally able to explore the region?
A: Ferdinand V. Hayden.

With government sponsorship, he returned to the region with a what?
A: A second, larger expedition, the Hayden Geological Survey of 1871.

He compiled a comprehensive report, including what?
A: Large-format photographs by William Henry Jackson and paintings by Thomas Moran.

The report helped to convince the U.S. Congress to do what?
A: Withdraw this region from public auction.

On March 1, 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed what?
A: The Act of Dedication law that created Yellowstone National Park.