Capitol Reef National Park Trivia
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91 free Capitol Reef National Park trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Capitol Reef National Park trivia quiz covers the long, thin park in south-central Utah built around the Waterpocket Fold, the biggest exposed monocline in North America. Questions cover the geology and the white Navajo Sandstone domes that gave the park its name, the Fremont people and their 'moki huts', the Mormon village of Fruita and its 2,500-tree orchards, and landmarks such as Cassidy Arch, Hickman Bridge, the Golden Throne and the Temples of the Sun and Moon. The history runs from Powell's surveyors and the 'Wayne Wonderland' boosters through Franklin Roosevelt's 1937 monument, Charles Kelly the custodian-without-pay, the uranium prospecting fight, State Route 24, Lyndon Johnson's huge 1968 enlargement and Richard Nixon's 1971 signature on the park bill. There are also questions on the trails, the Burr Trail and Notom road, the fruit harvest, the Gold Tier dark sky and the gateway town of Torrey. 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 Bryce Canyon and US National Parks quizzes next.
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Q 01Which treat is the old farmhouse store beside Capitol Reef's orchards best known for selling?
Pies
Pies, baked locally with fruit fillings, are the old farmhouse's best-known draw; the park has no restaurant, so the store, which usually reopens on 14 March, Pi Day, is where visitors go for a snack.
Q 02Capitol Reef is one of five Utah national parks that the state markets together under which nickname?
The Mighty 5
The Mighty 5 is the tourism office's label for Utah's five national parks; the idea is to send visitors on beyond a single park, to the other four and to the towns and state parks in between.
Q 03Capitol Reef's white sandstone domes reminded early settlers of the dome on which building?
The US Capitol
The US Capitol in Washington was the likeness settlers saw in the rounded white summits; 'reef' was the travellers' word for a line of cliffs that barred the way like a reef at sea.
Q 04The geological backbone of Capitol Reef is a nearly 100-mile warp in the Earth's crust called what?
The Waterpocket Fold
The Waterpocket Fold runs nearly 100 miles south to Lake Powell; the park is long and thin because its boundary simply traces the fold.
Q 05Capitol Reef's great fold is a textbook example of which kind of geological structure?
A monocline
A monocline is a step-like fold with one steep limb; here the west side stands more than 7,000 feet above the east, which is why the oldest rocks crop out in the west and the youngest in the east.
Q 06What did local boosters call the area in the 1920s while campaigning for its protection?
Wayne Wonderland
Wayne Wonderland was the name Ephraim Pectol and Joseph Hickman pushed in their newspaper stories; in 1935 it was dropped for 'Capitol Reef' as sounding too local for a national monument.
Q 07Which president proclaimed Capitol Reef National Monument on 2 August 1937?
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt set aside the 37,711-acre monument in the depths of the Depression, when the Park Service had no money to run it; no paid staff arrived for years.
Q 08Which president signed the 1971 law that made Capitol Reef a national park?
Nixon
Richard Nixon signed the bill on 18 December 1971, after Congress had argued over how big the park should be and how long ranchers could go on grazing it.
Q 09Which Capitol Reef landmark near the Temple of the Sun is made of selenite crystals?
Glass Mountain
Glass Mountain is a plug of selenite, the glassy crystal form of gypsum: gypsum that had worked its way through the surrounding rock gathered here in one mass, which erosion has since laid bare.
Q 10What did Lyndon Johnson do for the monument on his last day as president?
Enlarged it more than sixfold
Enlarged it more than sixfold is no exaggeration: his proclamation of 20 January 1969 added 215,056 acres to a monument of about 40,000, and in the same final hours he enlarged Arches too.
Q 11Under what title did Charles Kelly look after the monument before becoming its first superintendent?
Custodian-without-pay
Custodian-without-pay was Charles Kelly's title because the monument had no budget of its own; Charles and Harriette Kelly looked after it from the war years until funds finally arrived.
Q 12Until it had its own staff, the monument was administered from which other park?
Zion
Zion administered the monument as a satellite from its 1937 creation, the new unit having neither a budget nor paid staff of its own.
Q 13Capitol Reef sits on which high-desert region of layered rock, roughly centred on the Four Corners?
The Colorado Plateau
Q 21Which large ground squirrel, also known as a rock chuck, is a common sight in Fruita's orchards each spring?
Yellow-bellied marmot
Yellow-bellied marmots feed on Fruita's lush orchard grass from mid-March, then vanish: they can be back in their burrows to hibernate as early as August.
Q 22Hickman Bridge is named after Joseph Hickman, who was what?
A school principal turned state legislator
A school principal turned state legislator, Joseph Hickman had just won a state parks board for the area when he drowned in Fish Lake; without him the campaign stalled until the 1930s.
Q 23Which animal is the signature figure of the park's Fremont petroglyph panels?
The Colorado Plateau rose thousands of feet as a single block, which left its rock layers almost flat; the park's great fold is a rare place where they were bent instead.
Q 14Besides the bow and arrow, Fremont hunters at Capitol Reef used which spear-throwing stick?
An atlatl
An atlatl is a hooked stick that works as a lever, letting a hunter fling a light spear far harder than the arm alone; the Fremont used it alongside snares, nets and the bow.
Q 15Mormon settlers founded the village at the heart of the park in 1880 under what original name?
Junction
Junction was the settlement's first name, for its site where a creek meets the Fremont River; it became Fruita in the early 1900s as its orchards flourished.
Q 16What may visitors do in Fruita's historic orchards at harvest time?
Pick the fruit for a small fee
Pick the fruit for a small fee is the harvest rule: visitors may eat what they like inside the orchard for nothing, then pay by the pound for whatever is in season and carried out.
Q 17Which Fruita farmhouse, built by Calvin Pendleton in 1908, later became Capitol Reef's homestead store?
Gifford House
Gifford House is named for Dewey and Nell Gifford, who farmed there from 1928; when they sold up in 1969 they were Fruita's last residents, and their home became a store and museum.
Q 18The one-room Fruita schoolhouse, opened in 1896, was also used for what?
Dances and religious services
Dances and religious services also filled the log schoolhouse, which doubled as Fruita's church and community hall; classes ran there until 1941, when the dwindling village could no longer fill a school.
Q 19The arch above Grand Wash is named after which outlaw, said to have hidden nearby while on the run?
Butch Cassidy
Butch Cassidy is the namesake: the outlaw is thought to have hidden in Grand Wash now and then, and the arch high on its wall is one of the few that visitors can stand on.
Q 20Which canyon is named for the Mormon polygamists said to have hidden there from federal marshals?
Cohab Canyon
Cohab Canyon, a hidden canyon above the Fruita campground, is said to have sheltered 'cohabs' — polygamist Mormon men dodging the federal marshals who enforced the 1880s anti-polygamy laws.
Bighorn sheep
Bighorn sheep crowd the Fremont panels beside the highway; the Fremont hunted them for meat and hide, and the sheer number of carvings suggests the animals may have been revered as well.
Q 24The Temples of the Sun and Moon are freestanding monoliths of which sandstone?
Entrada
Entrada Sandstone is soft enough for erosion to whittle it into free-standing monoliths like the two Temples; the same rusty-orange layer forms the spans of Arches National Park.
Q 25Which unpaved route leads to the Temples of the Sun and Moon?
Cathedral Road
Cathedral Road threads the valley that Charles Kelly named in 1945 for monoliths that reminded early explorers of Gothic cathedrals; the Notom-Bullfrog Road and Burr Trail serve the park's south instead.
Q 26Which landmark's trail starts at the Capitol Gorge end of the Scenic Drive?
The Golden Throne
The Golden Throne owes its colour to a cap of younger rock that tints the normally white sandstone beneath; its trail climbs 2 miles from the Capitol Gorge trailhead.
Q 27Which backpacking route at Capitol Reef's southern tip runs about 22 miles round trip?
Halls Creek Narrows
Halls Creek Narrows is a deep gorge that the creek has cut into the white sandstone of the fold; hikers wade, and sometimes swim, between its arching walls.
Q 28Which mineral came out of the Oyler Mine in Grand Wash in the early 1900s, when it went into patent medicines?
Uranium
Uranium was dug here long before anyone wanted it for reactors or bombs; the Oyler Mine's gated tunnels still pierce the cliff at the mouth of Grand Wash, though the ore proved too thin to pay.
Q 29Which town about 11 miles west of the visitor center is Capitol Reef's gateway?
Torrey
Torrey, a town of fewer than 300 people, is where Scenic Byway 12 ends; in 1901 the ten-mile wagon trip from there to Fruita took more than an hour and a half in the best weather.
Q 30In April 2015 the International Dark-Sky Association recognised the park at which level?
Gold Tier
Gold Tier was the association's top rating for night-sky quality; to earn it the park spent a year refitting outdoor lights, lifting its share of night-friendly fixtures from 30 to 70 percent.