Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
60 free Grand Teton National Park trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Grand Teton National Park trivia quiz covers the 310,000-acre Wyoming park where the Teton Range shoots 7,000 feet straight up from the floor of Jackson Hole with no foothills in between. It ranges across the peaks and glaciers, the string of moraine lakes at the foot of the range, the Snake River and its native cutthroat trout, and the elk, moose, pronghorn, bears and wolves that make it one of the richest wildlife parks in the lower 48. The history questions dig into the fur trappers who named the Tetons, the disputed 1872 and 1898 first ascents, Calvin Coolidge's 1929 park, John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s covert land purchases and the bitterly opposed 1943 national monument, plus Mormon Row, Menor's Ferry, the Chapel of the Transfiguration, the film Shane, the Federal Reserve's summer retreat and the only commercial airport inside a US national park. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is marked on every question, so it works for a road-trip game or a hardcore park-nerd challenge. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and each question carries its citation. If you enjoy it, try our Yellowstone and US National Parks quizzes next.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Grand Teton National Park is in the northwest corner of which US state?
Wyoming
It sits just 10 miles south of Yellowstone, and together with the surrounding forests the two parks anchor the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
Q 02How tall is Grand Teton, the peak the park is named for?
13,775 feet
It rises more than 7,000 feet above the valley floor and is the second-highest peak in its state after Gannett Peak.
Q 03In which year was the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway added to the park system?
1972
The 24,000-acre strip honours the man who quietly bought up much of Jackson Hole for the park; the road runs from the park's south boundary to West Thumb.
Q 04French-speaking trappers called the range's peaks les trois tétons, which translates as what?
The three breasts
Earlier parties had called the peaks the Pilot Knobs; the more colourful name was later shortened to the Tetons.
Q 05Which president signed the executive order creating Grand Teton National Park on February 26, 1929?
Calvin Coolidge
That first park was just 96,000 acres, covering the peaks and six lakes at their base; the valley floor stayed in private hands.
Q 06Which president used the Antiquities Act in 1943 to create Jackson Hole National Monument over local opposition?
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Interior Secretary Harold Ickes suggested the move after Rockefeller threatened to sell his land; Congress repeatedly tried to abolish the monument.
Q 07In which year were Jackson Hole National Monument and Grand Teton National Park finally combined?
1950
The merger law included an unusual provision that still allows a regulated elk hunt inside the park each fall.
Q 08John D. Rockefeller Jr. secretly bought up Jackson Hole ranches through a front called what?
Snake River Land Company
When the plan was revealed in 1930 the valley erupted in anger, and Congress left the purchased land in limbo for more than a decade.
Q 09Which fur-trade partner of Jedediah Smith gave his name to the valley east of the Tetons?
Davey Jackson
He ran the Rocky Mountain Fur Company's trapping in the region from 1826 to 1830, and Sublette dubbed the valley Jackson's Hole in his honour.
Q 10Which former Lewis and Clark expedition member is credited as the first white man to see the Tetons, in 1807-08?
John Colter
Widely called the first mountain man, he had taken early discharge to go trapping; a stone carved with his name and 1808 turned up west of Teton Pass in 1931 but has never been authenticated.
Q 11The Tukudika, or Sheep-eater Shoshone of the Tetons, were named for which staple animal?
Bighorn
Stone enclosures on several peaks, including one just below the summit of Grand Teton, are thought to have been used by them for spiritual rites.
Q 12After 1868, the Shoshone of the Teton and Yellowstone country were relocated to which reservation?
Wind River
It lies about 100 miles southeast of Jackson Hole on land chosen by Chief Washakie.
Q 13In which year did Owen, Petersen, Shive and Spalding make the first substantiated ascent of Grand Teton?
1898
After that climb no one else recorded a summit until 1923; the party set out from Bill Menor's cabin and celebrated there that evening.
Q 21Jackson Lake Dam designer Frank A. Banks later supervised the building of which giant dam?
Grand Coulee Dam
His Jackson Lake structure raised the lake 30 feet above its natural level and holds 847,000 acre-feet.
Q 22Which English-born trapper's Shoshone wife, Jenny, gave her name to one of the park's best-known lakes?
Beaver Dick Leigh
Jenny and their six children died of smallpox in 1876; the neighbouring Leigh Lake carries his surname.
Q 23Jenny Lake sits behind a terminal moraine pushed out by a glacier that flowed out of which canyon?
Cascade
The lake formed about 12,000 years ago, is 256 feet deep and is the launch point for most climbs of the big peaks.
Q 14Which 1872 Hayden Survey member claimed, with James Stevenson, to have summited Grand Teton 26 years before Owen?
Nathaniel P. Langford
Later parties think they got no higher than The Enclosure; the dispute is often called the greatest controversy in American mountaineering.
Q 15Glenn Exum founded the Exum Mountain Guides in 1931 with which fellow climber?
Paul Petzoldt
Exum had just pioneered the northeast ridge of Grand Teton; the company is still regarded as one of the finest guide services in the country.
Q 16Which monolithic peak, capped by Flathead sandstone, rises 5,728 feet above Jackson Lake?
Mount Moran
Its Direct South Buttress offers a vertical mile of climbing that was considered the hardest route in the country when first done in 1953.
Q 17The oldest rocks dated in the park, among the most ancient in any US national park, are roughly how old?
2.7 billion years
They are Archean gneiss and schist; the light granite of the central peaks intruded them about 2.5 billion years ago.
Q 18The Tetons are the youngest range in the Rockies; roughly how long ago did they begin to rise?
6 to 9 million years
They are a fault-block range with no foothills, tilting west as earthquakes on the Teton Fault lift the mountains and drop the valley.
Q 19Jackson Lake, the park's largest, is about how long?
15 miles
It is a natural lake, but a dam at its outlet raised the water level almost 40 feet before the park existed.
Q 20The Jackson Lake Dam stores water for irrigation as part of which federal irrigation scheme?
Minidoka Project
The first log-crib dam failed in 1910; its concrete replacement sends water to farms more than 100 miles downstream.
Q 24Grand Teton contains the only commercial airfield inside a US national park; what is it called?
Jackson Hole Airport
It was built in the 1930s and swallowed by the 1943 monument; it now has some of the strictest noise rules of any US airport.
Q 25Which president landed at the park's airport in an Army helicopter on September 25, 1963?
John F. Kennedy
The runway had been extended to its current length in 1959, the year Frontier Airlines began the first scheduled service with DC-3s.
Q 26Which Fed chairman's love of fly fishing helped settle the Jackson Hole symposium at Jackson Lake Lodge in 1981?
Paul Volcker
The New York Times has called the late-August gathering the world's most exclusive economic get-together.
Q 27Which regional Federal Reserve bank hosts the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium?
Kansas City
Central bankers from some 70 countries have attended, and markets watch the speeches for hints about interest rates.
Q 28The Craig Thomas Discovery and Visitor Center at Moose, opened in 2007, is named for a late what?
US senator
It was designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson and paid for with a mix of federal grants and private donations.
Q 29Which woman bought Bill Menor's Snake River ferry at Moose in 1918 and ran it until 1927?
Maude Noble
Her cabin hosted the 1923 meeting where Horace Albright and local ranchers began plotting a national park.
Q 30The 1925 log Chapel of the Transfiguration was sited so its altar window frames what?
The Cathedral Group
The tiny Episcopal chapel belongs to St. John's in Jackson and was built for guests and staff of nearby dude ranches.