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50 free Great Basin National Park trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Great Basin National Park trivia quiz covers the quiet park in east-central Nevada near the Utah line, where the Snake Range rises out of the sagebrush to Wheeler Peak and its tiny glacier, and where Lehman Caves winds through the limestone below. Questions cover the geology and cave shields, the ancient bristlecone pines including Prometheus, the tree that turned out to be the oldest known when it was cut down, the Great Basin itself and why its water never reaches the sea, and the wildlife from Bonneville cutthroat trout to Townsend's big-eared bats. The human story runs from Absalom Lehman, the Australia gold-rush veteran who guided the first cave tours in 1885, through the Osceola gold camp, Warren Harding's 1922 monument and Harry Reid's 1986 park, to the Winchester rifle found leaning against a juniper in 2014 and the observatory that made this a Gold Tier dark sky park. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is marked on every question, so it suits a campfire game or a serious park-nerd challenge. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia or National Park Service pages and each question carries its citation. If you enjoy it, try our US National Parks and Yellowstone quizzes next.
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Q 01Great Basin National Park sits in eastern Nevada near the border with which neighbouring state?
Utah
It is about 290 miles north of the state's biggest city and is entered from the east side of the range.
Q 02In which year was Great Basin National Park established?
1986
Congressman Harry Reid pushed the bill through; the park absorbed the much older Lehman Caves National Monument.
Q 03Which president proclaimed Lehman Caves National Monument in January 1922?
Warren G. Harding
A highway association director from Tonopah and a Nevada senator had lobbied for the designation once Highway 50 brought motorists nearby.
Q 04What is the small gateway town at the park's entrance, home to the Great Basin visitor center?
Baker
It sits on State Route 487; the Lehman Caves visitor center is 5.5 miles up the road, half a mile inside the park.
Q 05The Great Basin is the largest area in North America of what kind of watershed?
Endorheic, with no outlet to the ocean
Every drop of rain that falls in the region evaporates, sinks underground or ends in a salty lake, as the explorer who named the region first recognised.
Q 06Which explorer coined the name Great Basin after realising the region had no connection to the ocean?
John C. Frémont
He drew partly on information from the mountain man Joseph R. Walker as well as his own expeditions in the 1840s.
Q 07The Great Basin lies between the Sierra Nevada and which range to the east?
Wasatch Mountains
The region takes in most of Nevada and pieces of six other states plus Baja California.
Q 08How tall is Wheeler Peak, the park's summit?
13,063 feet
It is the second-highest peak in its state but the tallest independent mountain, with 7,563 feet of prominence, the twelfth greatest in the lower 48.
Q 09Wheeler is only the second-highest point in its state; which summit on the California line is higher?
Boundary Peak
That summit is really a shoulder of Montgomery Peak across the border, with just 253 feet of prominence, so many consider Wheeler the state's true top.
Q 10Wheeler Peak takes its name from George Wheeler, who led what in the late 19th century?
A US Army survey of the West
An 1855 Army expedition had earlier named the mountain for Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War; that name later migrated to the neighbouring peak.
Q 11In 2019 Nevada's former Jeff Davis Peak was renamed Doso Doyabi, which means what in Shoshone?
White Mountain
The Nevada board approved the change in January and the federal Board on Geographic Names followed later that year.
Q 12Wheeler Peak Glacier holds what distinction within Nevada?
It is the only one in the state
It is a small cirque glacier of about 120,000 square feet, much of it buried under rock debris, tucked below the peak's northeast-facing headwall.
Q 13Prometheus, the bristlecone cut down in the park in 1964, was at least how old by ring count?
4,862 years
Q 21Lehman Caves holds more than 500 of which rare, round type of formation?
Cave shields
They grow as calcite plates on either side of a hairline crack; the Parachute is the most photographed example.
Q 22The Lehman Cave system began forming about 550 million years ago during which geological period?
Cambrian
The area lay under a warm shallow sea at the time; the caves later deepened during the Pleistocene as water flooded through the fractured rock.
Q 23Absalom Lehman, who first guided visitors into the caves in 1885, was what by trade?
Rancher
About 800 people toured the cave before September of that year, most guided by Lehman himself, and wagonloads of formations were shown at the state fair in Reno.
Allowing for missing inner rings it was probably over 5,000, which made it the oldest known non-clonal organism at the time; the cutters did not know its record age.
Q 14Who was the graduate student who cut down the tree known as WPN-114 in 1964?
Donald Currey
He was studying Little Ice Age climate with tree rings; accounts differ on whether a broken increment borer forced the chainsaw decision.
Q 15The tree code WPN-114 recorded that it was the 114th tree sampled in which Nevada county?
White Pine
The name Prometheus, after the Titan who stole fire from the gods, had been given by naturalists who admired the grove in the late 1950s.
Q 16Great Basin bristlecone needles can stay green on the tree for roughly how long?
45 years
That is among the longest leaf persistence of any plant; the trees themselves are so gnarled that often only a strip of living bark links roots to a few branches.
Q 17In which year was the bristlecone designated one of Nevada's state trees?
1987
It shares the honour with the single-leaf pinyon; the species grows in the high ranges of three western states.
Q 18Which bird's seed caches are thought to leave multi-trunked bristlecone pines?
Clark's nutcracker
Multi-trunk bristlecones are more common where the bird is present, which researchers take as evidence of its role.
Q 19Lehman Caves is about how long, making it the longest known cave in its state?
Two miles
The park runs two guided tours through it, a 0.6-mile route lasting about 90 minutes and a 0.4-mile route lasting about an hour.
Q 20Lehman Caves stays at roughly what temperature year-round?
50 °F
Humidity inside holds near 90 percent, which is why cave crickets, pseudoscorpions and springtails can live their whole lives there.
Q 24Before settling in Nevada, Absalom Lehman struck it rich mining gold on which continent?
Australia
He found gold in his back yard there and ran wool stores, returning to California in 1861 after his first wife and a daughter died.
Q 25According to one local legend, who or what really discovered the caves that bear Absalom Lehman's name?
His horse
Over 40 differing accounts survive; another version credits his brother Ben, who felt a strong current of wind blowing from a hole in the ground.
Q 26Which Ely newspaper first announced the cave's discovery in April 1885?
White Pine Reflex
It reported stalactites of extraordinary size and promised the explorers would return with sledgehammers to break into the next chamber.
Q 27Roughly how many people visit Great Basin National Park each year?
140,000
About 50,000 of them go underground on a Lehman Caves tour, making it one of the least crowded parks in the system.
Q 28What is the only fish native to Great Basin National Park?
Bonneville cutthroat
It descends from fish that swam in Ice Age Lake Bonneville; other trout were stocked in the range's streams until the park was created.
Q 29The park's only native fish has been the official state fish of which state since 1997?
Utah
It replaced the rainbow trout; the fish fed both Native Americans and Mormon pioneers.
Q 30How many species of mammals live in the park and its neighbouring valleys?
61
They range from pygmy rabbits and kit foxes in the sagebrush to bighorn sheep, cougars and ermine on the mountain slopes.