Arches National Park Trivia
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48 free Arches National Park trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Arches National Park trivia quiz covers the park outside Moab, Utah that holds the densest collection of natural stone arches on Earth. It ranges across the famous formations (Delicate Arch, Landscape Arch, Double Arch, Balanced Rock, the Fiery Furnace and Devils Garden), the strange geology of the salt bed and the Entrada Sandstone that made them, and the wildlife and living soil crust that survive in the high desert. There is plenty of history too: the Hungarian prospector who first pitched the area to a railroad, the presidents who created and enlarged the monument, the Civil War veteran who ranched under the arch, Edward Abbey's two ranger summers that became Desert Solitaire, the arch that collapsed one August night in 2008 and the free-solo climb that forced a rule change. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one, so it works for a road-trip game or a serious park-nerd challenge. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. If you enjoy this one, try our Yellowstone and US National Parks quizzes next.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Arches National Park sits just north of which small Utah town?
Moab
Moab lies a few miles south of the park entrance; Mormon missionaries tried to settle the spot in 1855 but abandoned it within months after clashes with Utes, and ranchers and prospectors returned a generation later.
Q 02Roughly how many natural stone arches have been documented in Arches National Park?
About 2,000
About 2,000 are on record; as recently as 1970 the park's own literature listed 'nearly 90', until dedicated arch hunters began surveying the backcountry systematically.
Q 03What lies deep beneath Arches National Park and is the main reason its arches, fins and spires exist?
A thick salt bed
A thick salt bed, the Paradox Formation, underlies the park; deposited when an inland sea dried up about 300 million years ago, it later flowed and buckled the overlying rock into the fins that became arches.
Q 04Most of the arches in Arches National Park are carved from which rock formation?
Entrada Sandstone
Entrada Sandstone, laid down as desert dunes, is so porous that rainwater soaks in and slowly dissolves the cement between its sand grains, rotting the rock from the inside out.
Q 05Hoover protected Arches as a national monument in 1929 using powers from which 1906 law?
The Antiquities Act
The Antiquities Act of 1906 let Herbert Hoover proclaim Arches National Monument on 12 April 1929, weeks after he took office; the Park Service had backed the idea since 1926, but the previous Interior Secretary had resisted it.
Q 06How did Arches' size change when it became a national park?
Shrank
Shrank: the 1971 act that made Arches a national park drew tighter boundaries, leaving out land the monument had held even as it raised the area's status.
Q 07About how much precipitation does Arches National Park receive in an average year?
About 9 inches
About 9 inches, inside the park's own 8-to-10-inch figure, is just enough: much more rain would wear the sandstone away before arches could form, and with none the erosion would stop.
Q 08Which other national park lies a short drive south-west of Arches and shares its gateway town?
Canyonlands
Canyonlands owes its start to an Arches superintendent, who explored the country to the south-west in the 1950s and campaigned for the national park that was created there in 1964.
Q 09Beside the entrance to Arches, rock layers of very different ages meet at road level; what brought them together?
A geological fault
A geological fault runs past the park entrance: one side moved about half a mile against the other, so layers laid down ages apart now face each other across the highway.
Q 10Visitors to Arches are told never to step on the dark, crumbly soil crust; what holds it together?
Cyanobacteria, lichens and fungi
Cyanobacteria, lichens and fungi weave a living crust that binds the sand and soaks up rain; a single footprint can kill the patch beneath it, and mature crusts may be thousands of years old.
Q 11Which acid in ordinary rainwater slowly dissolved the cement binding the sand grains of Arches' fins?
Carbonic acid
Carbonic acid, formed when rainwater absorbs carbon dioxide, dissolved the calcium carbonate cement between sand grains; gravity then dropped the weakened lower layers out of the fins piece by piece.
Q 12Which prospector first drew a railroad's attention to the Arches area in 1923?
Alexander Ringhoffer
Alexander Ringhoffer, a Hungarian-born prospector, took a railroad's passenger traffic manager to see the rock formations in 1923, hoping the line would promote the area as a tourist stop; the railroad then lobbied the Park Service.
Q 13The area a 1920s prospector first named 'Devils Garden' goes by what name today, after the label moved elsewhere in Arches?
Q 21Park rules ban climbing on any arch in Arches with an opening larger than what?
Three feet
Three feet is also the park's own threshold for counting a hole in the rock as an arch, so the ban covers every official arch; Balanced Rock is closed to climbers too.
Q 22What happened at Landscape Arch in September 1991?
A 60-foot slab fell from its underside
A 60-foot slab fell from its underside in 1991 and two more rockfalls followed in 1995; the trail that once ran beneath the arch has been closed ever since.
Q 23Which span in Arches' Devils Garden, the park's 12th largest, collapsed unobserved on the night of 4–5 August 2008?
Wall Arch
Klondike Bluffs
Klondike Bluffs is the area he called Devils Garden; government surveyors attached the name to the opposite side of Salt Valley, and his own discovery was left out of the 1929 monument entirely.
Q 14Which Depression-era president's proclamation enlarged Arches National Monument more than sevenfold?
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt's proclamation of 25 November 1938 added some 29,000 acres; until then Delicate Arch, now the emblem of Utah, lay outside the protected land.
Q 15Which president substantially enlarged Arches National Monument shortly before it became a national park?
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson signed the proclamation on 20 January 1969, his last day in office, adding almost 49,000 acres and more than doubling the monument.
Q 16Delicate Arch appears on which of these?
Utah license plates
Utah license plates have shown Delicate Arch since a 1992 design marking the state's coming centennial, and a centennial postage stamp used it too: the arch has become Utah's unofficial emblem.
Q 17What was carried through Delicate Arch in February 2002?
The Olympic flame
The Olympic flame passed beneath the arch at sunrise on 4 February 2002, after a blessing by a member of the Northern Ute tribe: it was the torch's first stop in Utah on the way to the Salt Lake City Winter Games.
Q 18Local cowboys gave Delicate Arch which nickname?
The Schoolmarm's Bloomers
The Schoolmarm's Bloomers was one cowboy name for it and the Chaps another; 'Delicate' arrived only in 1934, in an article on a scientific expedition that called it 'the most delicately chiseled arch in the entire area'.
Q 19In the 1950s the Park Service studied protecting Delicate Arch from erosion by doing what?
Coating it in clear plastic
Coating it in clear plastic was studied in the 1950s as a way to slow erosion; the idea was dropped as impractical and against Park Service principles, so the arch will one day fall like any other.
Q 20Which climber's free solo of Delicate Arch in May 2006 forced Arches to rewrite its climbing rules?
Dean Potter
Dean Potter free-soloed Delicate Arch in May 2006; the park's attorney judged the old ban on climbing named arches too loosely worded to enforce, so the rules were rewritten within the month.
Wall Arch fell in the night: campers at Devils Garden reported a rumble like thunder under clear skies, and next morning the remains of the 71-foot span lay across the hiking trail.
Q 24How was Double Arch in Arches National Park eroded?
From above, by water pooling in potholes
From above, by water pooling in potholes: most arches are worn through the side of a fin, but Double Arch was cut downward from the top, and its larger opening is the tallest in the park.
Q 25Which 1989 film opens with scenes shot in Arches National Park?
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade opens with young Indy's scout troop passing under Double Arch into a cave that does not really exist.
Q 26Balanced Rock, a landmark of Arches National Park, weighs approximately how much?
About 3,600 tons
Balanced Rock's 55-foot boulder weighs about 3,600 tons; its hard Slick Rock sandstone sits on a pedestal of softer Dewey Bridge mudstone that erodes faster, so it will eventually topple.
Q 27What was the name of Balanced Rock's smaller companion, which toppled in the winter of 1975–76?
Chip Off the Old Block
Chip Off the Old Block fell for the reason its big sibling eventually will: a hard sandstone boulder perched on softer rock that erodes away beneath it.
Q 28The Fiery Furnace takes its name from what?
Its reddish glow at sunset
Its reddish glow at sunset gave the Fiery Furnace its name, not any heat: the place is a shady labyrinth of narrow passages between tall sandstone walls.
Q 29Why does entering the Fiery Furnace require a permit or a ranger-led tour?
To limit damage from heavy visitation
To limit damage from heavy visitation: groups are capped at six, and every party must watch an orientation film on keeping to rock and sandy washes, which spares the plants and wildlife living between the fins.
Q 30Which three-pillared monolith stands in Arches' Courthouse Towers section?
The Three Gossips
The Three Gossips stand among the Courthouse Towers, a sandstone tower whose three heads seem to lean together as if trading secrets, which is how it got the name.