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48 free Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park trivia quiz covers the narrow, shadowed gorge in western Colorado that Duane Vandenbusche said combines 'depth, sheerness, narrowness, darkness, and dread' like no other canyon in the West. Questions cover the dimensions (2,722 feet deep at Warner Point, 40 feet wide at the river, the 2,250-foot Painted Wall), the geology of 1.7-billion-year-old gneiss and schist laced with pegmatite, and the river that cut through it an inch a century. The history is a story of people trying to get through: the Ute who avoided it, Captain Gunnison's 1853 survey and his death in Utah, William Jackson Palmer's narrow-gauge railroad and Rudyard Kipling's 'mad ride' through the gorge, the engineer whose 20-day survey took 68 days, the 1901 rubber-raft descent by Fellows and Torrence that found a site for the Gunnison Tunnel, and the monument that finally became a park in 1999. Wildlife, the Gold Medal trout water, the Curecanti reservoirs upstream and the canyon's odd cultural footprints round it out. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. If you enjoy this one, try our US National Parks quiz next.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Black Canyon of the Gunnison lies in which region of Colorado?
The Western Slope
The park sits on Colorado's Western Slope, the side of the state west of the Continental Divide, where the Gunnison River runs toward its meeting with the Colorado River.
Q 02Why is the canyon called 'Black'?
Its walls are so steep that little sunlight reaches the bottom
Parts of the gorge get only 33 minutes of sun a day, so the walls sit in shadow and look black.
Q 03Per one park history, how many minutes of sunlight do the darkest parts of the gorge get each day?
33
The darkest stretches of the gorge get only about 33 minutes of direct sunlight a day, because the walls are so sheer and the canyon so narrow for its depth.
Q 04How wide is the canyon at its narrowest point down at the river?
40 feet
The canyon narrows to just 40 feet at river level at The Narrows; even the tightest rim-to-rim gap in the park is about 1,100 feet.
Q 05What is the canyon's greatest depth, measured at Warner Point?
2,722 feet
The canyon is deepest at Warner Point, where it drops 2,722 feet from rim to river; at The Narrows it is 1,725 feet deep.
Q 06The Painted Wall, the tallest cliff in Colorado, rises how far from river to rim?
2,250 feet
The Painted Wall rises 2,250 feet from the river to the rim, nearly twice the 1,250-foot height of the Empire State Building.
Q 07The light-coloured stripes across the Painted Wall are made of which coarse-grained igneous rock?
Pegmatite
The stripes are pegmatite dikes, veins of large quartz, feldspar and mica crystals that intruded the dark gneiss and, being harder, stand out in relief.
Q 08How old are the gneiss and schist that make up most of the canyon walls?
About 1.7 billion years
The gneiss and schist are about 1.7 billion years old, metamorphosed under heat and pressure when volcanic island arcs collided with the southern edge of the ancient continent.
Q 09At what rate did the Gunnison River carve down through the hard Precambrian rock?
About an inch every 100 years
Confined in hard Precambrian gneiss and unable to shift course, the sediment-laden Gunnison ground straight down at only about an inch every 100 years.
Q 10How does the Gunnison's 34 ft-per-mile drop compare with the Colorado's in the Grand Canyon?
Roughly four to five times steeper
The Colorado falls only about 7.5 feet per mile through the Grand Canyon, so the Gunnison's 34 feet per mile is roughly four to five times steeper.
Q 11Where in the park does the river make its steepest plunge, 240 feet per mile?
Chasm View
At Chasm View the Gunnison drops 240 feet per mile, its steepest stretch; through the whole canyon it averages 34 feet per mile.
Q 12The Gunnison, one of the Colorado River's largest tributaries, joins it at which city?
Grand Junction
The Gunnison meets the Colorado at Grand Junction, the city named for that junction; in 1776 Spanish explorers had called the Gunnison the Río de San Javier.
Q 13How long is the whole Black Canyon, from Curecanti downstream to the Gunnison Gorge?
48 miles
The Black Canyon runs 48 miles in all; the park protects its deepest section, with the gorge continuing upstream into Curecanti National Recreation Area and downstream into the Gunnison Gorge.
Q 21What were Abraham Lincoln Fellows and William Torrence seeking on the canyon's first recorded descent in 1901?
A site for a water-diversion tunnel
They were scouting a site for a water-diversion tunnel to the dry Uncompahgre Valley; after days in the gorge, swimming the river repeatedly, they found the spot that became the Gunnison Tunnel's intake.
Q 22What did the 1901 explorers use instead of the wooden boats that had doomed a 1900 attempt?
A multi-chambered rubber raft
Their multi-chambered rubber raft, an inflatable ringed by a lifeline, floated their 35-pound packs through the rapids that had wrecked the wooden boats of the 1900 attempt.
Q 23How long is the Gunnison Tunnel, completed in 1909 to carry river water to the Uncompahgre Valley?
Q 14Which Native people knew the canyon long before Europeans and are said to have avoided it out of superstition?
The Ute
The Ute knew the rims for centuries but, by tradition, avoided the gorge itself out of superstition; they called the river 'much rocks, big water'.
Q 15Captain John Williams Gunnison first described the canyon in 1853 while surveying what?
A railroad route to the Pacific
Gunnison led one of the 1853 Pacific Railroad Surveys, seeking a railroad route to the Pacific along the 38th parallel; he found the gorge impassable and detoured south toward the Uncompahgre Valley.
Q 16What happened to Captain Gunnison later in 1853?
He was killed by Ute warriors in Utah
A band of Pahvant Ute attacked his party near Sevier Lake, killing him and seven others; the river and the town of Gunnison were named in his honour.
Q 17Which railroad ran the first passenger train through the canyon on 13 August 1882?
Denver and Rio Grande
The Denver and Rio Grande, William Jackson Palmer's narrow-gauge line, reached Gunnison in 1881 and pushed its tracks through the canyon to Cimarron the following year.
Q 18Carving the 15-mile railroad bed from Sapinero to Cimarron reportedly cost how much per mile?
$165,000
The Sapinero–Cimarron stretch cost a reported $165,000 a mile, blasted out of the gorge by Irish and Italian crews over more than a year.
Q 19How many days did Byron Bryant's 1882–83 inner-canyon survey take, expected to need 20?
68
Byron Bryant's survey took 68 days instead of the planned 20; most of his crew quit in terror within days, and he reported the canyon impenetrable for a railroad.
Q 20Which famous writer called his 1889 train ride through the gorge 'the mad ride'?
Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling rode the narrow-gauge line through the gorge in 1889 and wrote in From Sea to Sea of 'the mad ride', on track seemingly built by 'dropping miscellaneous dirt into the river'.
5.8 miles
The Gunnison Tunnel runs 5.8 miles, about 30,600 feet, from the East Portal in the canyon to the Uncompahgre Valley, opened in 1909 after four years of work.
Q 24Which president dedicated the Gunnison Tunnel on 23 September 1909?
William Howard Taft
President William Howard Taft dedicated the tunnel in person on 23 September 1909, in the first year of his presidency, sending the first Gunnison water toward the Uncompahgre Valley.
Q 25How many workers died building the tunnel over its four years?
26
26 workers died during the four-year bore, in heat, flooding, carbon dioxide and a fractured fault zone where 2,000 feet of water-filled rock took almost a year.
Q 26In which year was Black Canyon of the Gunnison first protected as a national monument?
1933
Herbert Hoover proclaimed Black Canyon of the Gunnison a national monument on 2 March 1933, two days before leaving office.
Q 27In which year did it become a national park?
1999
Congress upgraded the monument to a national park in October 1999, with the same act creating the Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area downstream.
Q 28Which New Deal agency built the North Rim Road and its overlooks in the mid-1930s?
Civilian Conservation Corps
The Civilian Conservation Corps built the five-mile North Rim Road and its five overlooks in the mid-1930s; the road is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Q 29About what fraction of the park's area is designated wilderness?
About half
About half: the Black Canyon of the Gunnison Wilderness covers 15,599 acres of the roughly 30,750-acre park, first designated in 1976 and enlarged when the park was created in 1999.
Q 30Which nearby town, 15 miles west of the south rim entrance, is the park's main gateway?
Montrose
Montrose, about 15 miles west of the South Rim entrance, is the park's gateway town; the turnoff from US Highway 50 onto Colorado 347 leads up to the rim.