Grand Canyon Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

Trivia quiz questions with answers about the Grand Canyon.

Grand Canyon Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

What is the Grand Canyon?
A: The Grand Canyon is a steep-sided canyon carved by the Colorado River in Arizona, United States.

How long is the Grand Canyon?
A: 277 miles.

How wide is it?
A: Up to 18 miles wide.

What is its maximum depth?
A: Over a mile (6,093 feet).

President Theodore Roosevelt was a major proponent of preservation of the Grand Canyon area, and visited it on numerous occasions to do what?
A: Hunt and enjoy the scenery.

Nearly two billion years of Earth's geological history have been exposed as the Colorado River and its tributaries cut their channels through what?
A: Layer after layer of rock while the Colorado Plateau was uplifted.

For thousands of years, the area has been continuously inhabited by whom?
A: Native Americans, who built settlements within the canyon and its many caves.

The Pueblo people considered the Grand Canyon a what?
A: A holy site, and made pilgrimages to it.

Who was the first European known to have viewed the Grand Canyon?
A: García López de Cárdenas from Spain, who arrived in 1540.

The Grand Canyon is a river valley in the Colorado Plateau that exposes what?
A: Uplifted Proterozoic and Paleozoic strata.

The Grand Canyon is known for its visually overwhelming size and its what?
A: Its intricate and colorful landscape.

Geologically, it is significant because of the thick sequence of ancient rocks that are what?
A: Well preserved and exposed in the walls of the canyon.

These rock layers record much of the early geologic history of what?
A: The North American continent.

Uplift associated with mountain formation later moved these sediments thousands of feet upward and created the what?
A: The Colorado Plateau.

The uplift of the Colorado Plateau is uneven, and the Kaibab Plateau that Grand Canyon bisects is how much higher at the North Rim than at the South Rim?
A: Over one thousand feet.

Almost all runoff from the North Rim flows toward what?
A: The Grand Canyon.

The result is deeper and longer tributary washes and canyons on what?
A: The north side and shorter and steeper side canyons on the south side.

Temperatures on the North Rim are generally lower than those on the South Rim because of what?
A: The greater elevation (averaging 8,000 feet above sea level).

When are heavy rains common on both rims?
A: During the summer months.

Access to the North Rim via the primary route leading to the canyon (State Route 67) is limited during what season?
A: During the winter season due to road closures.

The Grand Canyon is part of the Colorado River basin which has developed over the past how many years?
A: 70 million.

A recent study examining caves near Grand Canyon places their origins beginning about when?
A: 17 million years ago.

Previous estimates had placed the age of the canyon at what?
A: 5–6 million years.

The study, which was published in the journal Science in 2008, used uranium-lead dating to analyze calcite deposits found on the walls of how many caves throughout the canyon?
A: Nine.

The great depth of the Grand Canyon and especially the height of its strata (most of which formed below sea level) can be attributed to 5–10 thousand feet (1,500 to 3,000 m) of what?
A: Uplift of the Colorado Plateau, starting about 65 million years ago.

This uplift has steepened the stream gradient of the Colorado River and its tributaries, which in turn has increased their speed and thus their ability to do what?
A: To cut through rock.

Weather conditions during the ice ages also increased the amount of water in what?
A: The Colorado River drainage system.

How did the ancestral Colorado River respond?
A: By cutting its channel faster and deeper.

The base level and course of the Colorado River (or its ancestral equivalent) changed 5.3 million years ago when what happened?
A: The Gulf of California opened and lowered the river's base level (its lowest point).

This increased the rate of erosion and cut nearly all of the Grand Canyon's current depth by when?
A: 1.2 million years ago.

The terraced walls of the canyon were created by what?
A: Differential erosion.

Between 100,000 and 3 million years ago, volcanic activity deposited ash and lava over the area which at times completely what?
A: Obstructed the river.

These volcanic rocks are the what?
A: The youngest in the canyon.

The Ancestral Puebloans were a Native American culture centered on the present-day what?
A: Four Corners area of the United States.

They were the first people known to live where?
A: In the Grand Canyon area.

Archaeologists still debate what?
A: When this distinct culture emerged.

In September 1540, under orders from the conquistador Francisco Vázquez de Coronado to search for the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola, Captain García López de Cárdenas, along with Hopi guides and a small group of Spanish soldiers, traveled to where?
A: The south rim of the Grand Canyon between Desert View and Moran Point.

Pablo de Melgrossa, Juan Galeras, and a third soldier descended some one third of the way into the canyon until what happened?
A: They were forced to return because of lack of water.

No Europeans visited the canyon again for how long?
A: More than two hundred years.

Jacob Hamblin, a Mormon missionary, was sent by whom, in the 1850s to locate suitable river crossing sites in the canyon?
A: Brigham Young.

In 1858, John Strong Newberry became probably the first “what”,to visit the Grand Canyon?
A: Geologist.

In 1869, Major John Wesley Powell led the first expedition where?
A: Down the canyon.

Gathering nine men, four boats and food for 10 months, he set out on May 24 from where?
A: Green River, Wyoming.

The group passed down the Green River to its confluence with the Colorado River, near present-day Moab, Utah and completed the journey with many hardships through the Grand Canyon on what date?
A: August 13, 1869.

In 1871 Powell first used what term?
A: The Grand Canyon. Previously it had been called the "Big Canyon".

In what year did the Grand Canyon become an official national monument?
A: In 1908 and a national park in 1919.

An avid outdoorsman and staunch conservationist, what did Roosevelt establish on November 28, 1906?
A: The Grand Canyon Game Preserve.

Livestock grazing was reduced, but predators such as mountain lions, eagles, and wolves were what?
A: Eradicated.

Roosevelt along with other members of his conservation group, the Boone and Crockett Club helped form the National Parks Association, which in turn lobbied for what?
A: The Antiquities Act of 1906 which gave Roosevelt the power to create national monuments.

Once the act was passed, Roosevelt immediately added adjacent national forest lands and redesignated the preserve a what?
A: A U.S. National Monument on January 11, 1908.

Opponents such as land and mining claim holders blocked efforts to reclassify the monument as a U.S. National Park for how long?
A: 11 years.

Grand Canyon National Park was finally established as the 17th U.S. National Park by an Act of Congress signed into law by whom?
A: President Woodrow Wilson on February 26, 1919.