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50 free Hawaii Volcanoes National Park trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Hawaii Volcanoes National Park trivia quiz covers the Big Island park built around two of the most active volcanoes on Earth: Kilauea, which erupted almost without pause from 1983 to 2018 and again from 2020, and Mauna Loa, the largest active volcano on the planet. Questions cover the geology and the eruptions, from the 1959 Kilauea Iki fountains to the 2018 summit collapse and the 2022 Mauna Loa awakening, the caldera that Hawaiians hold sacred as the home of Pele, and the park's lava tubes, craters and coastal roads that keep getting buried. History is here too: the missionaries who first wrote about the crater in 1823, Mark Twain at Volcano House, Thomas Jaggar's observatory, the Buffalo Soldiers who built the first trails, Lorrin Thurston's campaign for the 1916 park, the Kahuku expansion and the endangered nene, hawksbills and hawks the park protects. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is marked on every question, so it works for a car game on Crater Rim Drive or a serious park-nerd challenge. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and each question carries its citation. If you enjoy it, try our Volcanoes and Haleakala quizzes next.
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Q 01Which two active volcanoes lie within Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park?
Kīlauea and Mauna Loa
Kīlauea and Mauna Loa are the park's two active volcanoes: Kīlauea is among the most active on Earth, and Mauna Loa is the world's largest active volcano, rising some 30,000 feet from the seafloor.
Q 02What does the name Kīlauea mean in Hawaiian, a nod to how often it erupts?
Much spreading
Kīlauea means 'much spreading' or 'spewing', a fitting name since lavas younger than 1,000 years cover about 90 percent of its surface.
Q 03Mauna Loa's name translates as what?
Long mountain
Mauna Loa means 'long mountain', apt for a shield volcano whose gentle slopes hold an estimated 18,000 cubic miles of rock and stretch about 75 miles from end to end.
Q 04How high is the summit of Mauna Loa?
13,679 feet
Mauna Loa's summit stands 13,679 feet (4,169 meters) above sea level; the park runs from the coast to that summit, from rainforest to bare alpine lava.
Q 05Kīlauea's summit crater Halemaʻumaʻu is traditionally regarded as the home of which deity?
Pele
Halemaʻumaʻu is held to be the home of Pele, the volcano goddess; offerings are left at the crater rim, and strands and droplets of volcanic glass are named Pele's hair and Pele's tears.
Q 06When it was created in 1916, the park also included which volcano on another island?
Haleakalā
Hawaii National Park originally took in Haleakalā on Maui as well as the Big Island volcanoes; it was split into two separate parks in 1961.
Q 07Which president signed the 1916 bill creating the park?
Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson signed the act creating Hawaii National Park on August 1, 1916, the first national park in a US territory; he signed the law creating the National Park Service itself on August 25 that year.
Q 08Which newspaper owner and hotel investor was the driving force behind creating the park?
Lorrin A. Thurston
Lorrin A. Thurston, publisher of the Honolulu Advertiser and an investor in the crater-rim hotel, campaigned in print for the park from 1906 and lobbied Congress until the bill passed in 1916.
Q 09Which Buffalo Soldier regiment built the park's first trails and infrastructure from 1915 to 1917?
25th Infantry
Soldiers of the all-Black 25th Infantry Regiment, stationed at Schofield Barracks, built the trail from Kīlauea to Mauna Loa's summit in 1915, breaking lava with 12-pound hammers and packing it in gunny sacks.
Q 10Who were the first Western visitors to reach Kīlauea, in 1823?
Missionaries William Ellis and Asa Thurston
Missionaries William Ellis and Asa Thurston, on a tour around the island, reached the crater rim in August 1823; Ellis wrote that they 'stopped and trembled', struck mute by the fiery abyss below.
Q 11What is the only hotel located inside the park?
Volcano House
Volcano House is the only hotel inside the park; hotels of that name have stood on the crater rim since a grass shelter of 1846, and the current building dates from 1941.
Q 12Which famous author stayed at the crater-rim hotel and described the volcano in Roughing It?
Mark Twain
Mark Twain visited Kīlauea in June 1866 as a newspaper correspondent and stayed at the crater-rim hotel; his account of walking across the glowing crater floor by night appears in Roughing It (1872).
Q 13In 1790 a party of warriors was caught in an explosive eruption; what trace of them can still be seen?
Footprints in the lava
Q 21After what gap did Mauna Loa erupt again in November 2022?
About 40 years
Mauna Loa's November 2022 eruption ended a gap of about 40 years (38 to be exact): the previous one, in 1984, sent lava within four miles of Hilo, and the 2022 event lasted about two weeks.
Q 22Mauna Loa's summit caldera is called Mokuʻāweoweo, named for what?
A red fish
Mokuʻāweoweo takes its name from the ʻāweoweo, a red fish whose colour recalled the caldera's glowing eruptions; the caldera is about three miles long and up to 600 feet deep.
Q 23The 1959 eruption of Kīlauea Iki produced a lava fountain of roughly what height, a Hawaiian record?
1,900 feet
The 1790 Footprints site is on the National Register of Historic Places; explosive eruptions like that one are rare at Kīlauea.
Q 14Who founded the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and directed it from 1912 to 1940?
Thomas Jaggar
Thomas Jaggar, an MIT geologist with a Harvard doctorate, was shaken by the 1902 Mont Pelée disaster in Martinique and founded the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory on Kīlauea's rim in 1912, directing it until 1940.
Q 15Which federal agency runs the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory?
US Geological Survey
The US Geological Survey has run the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory since 1947, one of its five volcano observatories; HVO monitors six Hawaiian volcanoes, including the submarine Kamaʻehuakanaloa.
Q 16Kīlauea's eastern rift zone eruption ran nearly continuously from 1983 until which year?
2018
The eruption ended in 2018, when the rift's magma drained into the lower Puna outbreak; in its 35 years it buried Kalapana and Kaimū in 1990 and was the longest East Rift eruption in at least 500 years.
Q 17What is the name of the cinder cone that grew on Kīlauea's east rift during the 1983-2018 eruption?
Puʻu ʻŌʻō
Puʻu ʻŌʻō, 'hill of the digging stick', was named by Kalapana elders; scientists had first called the vent Puʻu O because it rose near the letter O in a map label.
Q 18How many homes did Hawaii County report destroyed in the 2018 lower Puna eruption?
716
Hawaii County counted 716 dwellings destroyed: 24 fissures fed lava rivers that buried Kapoho and Vacationland, reached the sea and boiled away Green Lake, the state's largest natural lake.
Q 19What happened at Kīlauea's summit during the 2018 eruption?
The lava lake drained and the crater collapsed
As magma drained to lower Puna, the Halemaʻumaʻu lava lake drained away and the crater collapsed in 62 step-like events, deepening it by over 1,600 feet; ash blasts reached 30,000 feet and the Kīlauea section closed for months.
Q 20What appeared in the bottom of Halemaʻumaʻu in summer 2019, never before seen there in recorded history?
A water lake
A water lake, first spotted in July 2019, pooled at the bottom of Halemaʻumaʻu and grew to about 160 feet deep before the December 2020 eruption boiled it away and began refilling the crater with lava.
The five-week eruption filled the pit crater with a lava lake whose crusted floor visitors now hike across; it is still cooling and shrinking.
Q 24Which paved park path crosses the cinder-buried rainforest destroyed by the 1959 Kīlauea Iki fountains?
Devastation
Devastation Trail is a paved half-mile path through the pumice and cinder that the 1959 fountains dumped on dense rainforest; the fallout built the cone Puʻu Puaʻi beside it.
Q 25What is the Hawaiian name of the park's popular walk-through lava tube, long called Thurston Lava Tube?
Nāhuku
Nāhuku, meaning 'the protuberances' after the lava drips that once hung from its ceiling, formed roughly 500 years ago; visitors walk its lit section through tree-fern rainforest on the crater's east side.
Q 26How long is the Chain of Craters Road, which winds from the East Rift down to the coast?
19 miles
Chain of Craters Road runs 19 miles and drops 3,700 feet from the rift zone's string of pit craters to the coast at Hōlei Sea Arch; lava from Kīlauea's decades-long East Rift eruption repeatedly buried its lower end.
Q 27How big is Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park?
About 354,000 acres
The park covers about 354,000 acres after the 2003 Kahuku and 2022 Pōhue Bay additions; well over 100,000 acres have been designated wilderness since 1978, and the park runs from sea level to Mauna Loa's summit.
Q 28The 2003 purchase of the Kahuku Ranch, Hawaii's largest land acquisition, enlarged the park by what share?
56%
The 115,788-acre Kahuku Ranch, bought in 2003 for $21.9 million from the Samuel Mills Damon estate with Nature Conservancy financing, enlarged the park by 56 percent.
Q 29In which year did UNESCO list the park as a World Heritage Site?
1987
UNESCO inscribed Hawaiʻi Volcanoes as a World Heritage Site in 1987, citing its two of the world's most active volcanoes and the ongoing island-building they display.
Q 30The park was depicted on a coin in 2012 as part of which US Mint series?
America the Beautiful Quarters
The Hawaiʻi Volcanoes quarter was the 14th design in the America the Beautiful Quarters series (2010-2021), which honoured a national site in every state and territory; it shows lava erupting at Kīlauea.