Yosemite National Park Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

Fun long trivia quiz with answers about Yosemite National Park

Yosemite National Park Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

What is Yosemite National Park?
A: Yosemite National Park is an American national park located in the western Sierra Nevada of Central California, bounded on the southeast by Sierra National Forest and on the northwest by Stanislaus National Forest.

Who manages the park?
A: The park is managed by the National Park Service.

How many acres does it cover?
A: It covers an area of 747,956 acres.

Designated a World Heritage site in 1984, Yosemite is internationally recognized for its what?
A: Granite cliffs, waterfalls, clear streams, giant sequoia groves, lakes, mountains, meadows, glaciers, and biological diversity.

Almost 95% of the park is designated as what?
A: Wilderness.

On average, how many people visit Yosemite each year?
A: About 4 million.

Most people spend the majority of their time where?
A: In the 5.9 square miles of Yosemite Valley.

The park set a visitation record in 2016, surpassing how many visitors for the first time in its history?
A: 5 million.

Yosemite was central to the development of what?
A: The national park idea.

Galen Clark and others lobbied to protect Yosemite Valley from development, ultimately leading to what?
A: President Abraham Lincoln's signing the Yosemite Grant in 1864.

John Muir led a successful movement to have Congress establish a larger national park by 1890, one which encompassed what?
A: The valley and its surrounding mountains and forests, paving the way for the National Park System.

Yosemite is one of the largest and least fragmented habitat blocks in the what?
A: Sierra Nevada.

The park has an elevation range from 2,127 feet to what?
A: 13,114 feet.

It contains what five major vegetation zones?
A: Chaparral and oak woodland, lower montane forest, upper montane forest, subalpine zone, and alpine.

Of California's 7,000 plant species, about 50% occur where?
A: In the Sierra Nevada and more than 20% are within Yosemite.

The park contains suitable habitat for more than how many rare plants?
A: 160, with rare local geologic formations and unique soils characterizing the restricted ranges many of these plants occupy.

The geology of the Yosemite area is characterized by what?
A: Granitic rocks and remnants of older rock.

About 10 million years ago, the Sierra Nevada was uplifted and then tilted to form its what?
A: Relatively gentle western slopes and the more dramatic eastern slopes.

The uplift increased the steepness of stream and river beds, resulting in what?
A: The formation of deep, narrow canyons.

About one million years ago, snow and ice accumulated, forming what?
A: Glaciers at the higher alpine meadows that moved down the river valleys.

Ice thickness in Yosemite Valley may have reached what thickness?
A: 4,000 feet during the early glacial episode.

The downslope movement of the ice masses cut and sculpted what?
A: The U-shaped valley that attracts so many visitors to its scenic vistas today.

The name "Yosemite" (meaning "killer" in Miwok) originally referred to the name of what?
A: A renegade tribe which was driven out of the area (and possibly annihilated) by the Mariposa Battalion.

Previously, the area had been called what?
A: "Ahwahnee" ("big mouth") by indigenous people.

Yosemite Valley has been inhabited for nearly 3,000 years, though humans may have first visited how long ago?
A: As long as 8,000 to 10,000 years ago.

The indigenous natives called themselves what?
A: The Ahwahnechee, meaning "dwellers in Ahwahnee."

Many tribes visited the area to trade, including whom?
A: The nearby Central Sierra Miwoks, who lived along the drainage area of the Tuolumne and Stanislaus Rivers.

Vegetation and game in the region were similar to that of what?
A: Present day; acorns were a staple to their diet, as well as other seeds and plants, salmon and deer.

The California Gold Rush in the mid-19th century dramatically increased travel by European-Americans in the area, causing what?
A: Competition for resources between the regional Paiute and Miwok and the miners and hangers on.

In 1851 as part of the Mariposa Wars intended to suppress Native American resistance, who led the Mariposa Battalion into the west end of Yosemite Valley?
A: United States Army Major Jim Savage.

Accounts from this battalion were the first well-documented reports of what?
A: Ethnic Europeans entering Yosemite Valley.

Attached to Savage's unit was whom?
A: Dr. Lafayette Bunnell, the company physician, who later wrote about his awestruck impressions of the valley in The Discovery of the Yosemite.

Bunnell is credited with what?
A: Naming Yosemite Valley, based on his interviews with Chief Tenaya.

Bunnell wrote that Chief Tenaya was what?
A: The founder of the Ah-wah-nee colony.

The Miwok, a neighboring tribe, and most white settlers considered the Ahwahneechee to be especially violent because of their what?
A: Their frequent territorial disputes.

Chief Tenaya and his Ahwahneechee were eventually captured and their village burned; they were removed to a reservation near where?
A: Fresno, California.

The chief and some others were later allowed to do what?
A: To return to Yosemite Valley.

In the spring of 1852, who did they attack?
A: A group of eight gold miners, and then moved east to flee law enforcement.

Near Mono Lake, they took refuge with whom?
A: The nearby Mono tribe of Paiute.

They stole horses from their hosts and moved away, but the Mono Paiutes do?
A: They tracked down and killed many of the Ahwahneechee, including Chief Tenaya.

The Mono Paiute took the survivors as captives back to Mono Lake and did what?
A: Absorbed them into the Mono Lake Paiute tribe.

The Wawona Tree, also known as the Tunnel Tree, was a what?
A: A famous giant sequoia that stood in the Mariposa Grove.

How tall was it?
A: It was 227 feet tall, and was 90 ft in circumference.

What was cut through the tree in 1881?
A: A carriage-wide tunnel, and it became even more popular as a tourist photo attraction.

The Wawona Tree fell in 1969 under what?
A: A heavy load of snow.

It was estimated to have been how old?
A: 2,300 years old.

When was Yosemite's first concession established?
A: In 1884 when John Degnan and his wife established a bakery and store.

Concerned by the effects of commercial interests, prominent citizens including Galen Clark and Senator John Conness advocated for what?
A: Protection of the area.

A park bill was prepared and passed both houses of the 38th United States Congress, and it was signed by whom?
A: President Abraham Lincoln on June 30, 1864, creating the Yosemite Grant.

This is the first instance of park land being set aside specifically for what?
A: Preservation and public use by action of the U.S. federal government, and set a precedent for the 1872 creation of Yellowstone as the first national park.

Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove were ceded to California as a what?
A: State park, and a board of commissioners was proclaimed two years later.

Galen Clark was appointed by the commission as the Grant's first guardian, but neither Clark nor the commissioners had what?
A: The authority to evict homesteaders.

Tourism significantly increased after what?
A: The First Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869.

Three stagecoach roads were built in the mid-1870s to provide what?
A: Better access for the growing number of visitors to Yosemite Valley.

John Muir was a Scottish-born what?
A: American naturalist and explorer.

It was because of Muir that many National Parks were left what?
A: Untouched, such as Yosemite Valley National Park.

One of the most significant camping trips Muir took was in 1903 with whom?
A: Then president Theodore Roosevelt.

This trip persuaded Roosevelt to do what?
A: To return "Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove to federal protection as part of Yosemite National Park"