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50 free Kenai Fjords National Park trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Kenai Fjords National Park trivia quiz covers the ice-capped park outside Seward, Alaska, where the Harding Icefield spills nearly forty glaciers into deep fjords carved below sea level. Questions cover the icefield and its snowfall, Exit Glacier at the end of the park's only road, Bear and Aialik glaciers, the plate tectonics that drown the coast, the succession of plants on freshly exposed rock, and the sea otters, Steller sea lions, puffins and whales that fill the tour-boat commentary. The history side takes in the ancient villages drowned by a medieval earthquake, the Nuka Bay gold mines, the 1968 icefield crossing that named Exit Glacier, Jimmy Carter's 1978 monument and the 1980 ANILCA park, the Exxon Valdez oil that reached the coast in 1989, Barack Obama's 2015 visit, and Seward itself, from Baranov's fur post to the Alaska SeaLife Center. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is marked on every question, so it works for a boat-tour game or a serious park-nerd challenge. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and each question carries its citation. If you enjoy it, try our Glacier Bay and US National Parks quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Kenai Fjords, the closest national park to Anchorage, lies roughly how far south of the city?
130 miles
Its gateway town of Seward sits at the head of Resurrection Bay at the end of the highway; the park headquarters is there.
Q 02How large is the Harding Icefield that dominates the park's interior?
Over 700 square miles
Counting its outflowing glaciers it tops 1,100 square miles, and it is the largest icefield contained entirely within the United States.
Q 03The park's icefield is named after which US president?
Warren G. Harding
Local residents largely ignored the ice west of town until a 1922 trail opened up views, and the president's promised visit to Alaska earned him the name.
Q 04How much snow does the Harding Icefield receive in a typical year?
Over 400 inches
That is more than 30 feet; the park article puts it at 60 feet in places, and the icefield still lost 3 percent of its area in a 16-year study.
Q 05At least how many glaciers flow out of the icefield?
38
The largest is named for an animal; the most accessible sits at the end of the park's only road.
Q 06What is the largest glacier in the park?
Bear
President Obama viewed it from a boat on Resurrection Bay during his 2015 visit.
Q 07Exit Glacier is one of the icefield's smaller glaciers, yet one of the most visited; why?
It is reachable by road and trails
A spur off the highway leads to a nature center; when snow closes the road in November it opens to skiers, dogsleds and fat bikes.
Q 08How did Exit Glacier get its name?
Where the first icefield crossing came out in 1968
Ten people set out from Homer across the Harding Icefield; only four walked the whole way, and a newspaper reported they would descend the Exit Glacier.
Q 09How far did Exit Glacier retreat between 2013 and 2014 alone?
About 187 feet
Park scientists track its accelerating recession, and it has become a symbol of climate change in Alaska.
Q 10Which president visited Exit Glacier in 2015 with Bear Grylls to talk about climate change?
Barack Obama
He called the receding edge as good a signpost of climate change as anything, then toured a local ice cream shop and Resurrection Bay by boat.
Q 11How long is the Harding Icefield Trail that climbs from the Exit Glacier nature center to the ice?
7.4 miles
It is one of only three Alaska national parks you can drive to at all.
Q 12Which president proclaimed Kenai Fjords a national monument on December 1, 1978?
Jimmy Carter
He used the Antiquities Act while the Alaska lands bill stalled; a single ranger was posted to town as a liaison.
Q 13Under which 1980 law did Kenai Fjords go from monument to park?
Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act
Q 21A 1993 survey found evidence that an earthquake around 1170 AD did what to the park's shoreline?
Lowered it by at least six feet
Sinking coasts and rising seas have drowned many early village sites, overturning the old idea that people only passed through.
Q 22Historic gold mining in the park centred on which bay?
Nuka Bay
Eleven mine sites have been documented, some active into the 1980s, and two qualify for the National Register.
Q 23On what date did the first oil from the Exxon Valdez reach the park's coast?
April 10, 1989
The 1982 management plan called Exit Glacier front-country, the fjords back-country and the icefield wilderness.
Q 14Kenai Fjords was the only Alaska national park that originally did not allow what?
Native subsistence use
Native corporations kept inholdings and later established subsistence rights on them; the Park Service repurchased 30,295 acres in the 1990s.
Q 15Roughly what share of the park is covered by ice?
51%
The icefield first formed about 23,000 years ago and spawns more than thirty glaciers.
Q 16The park's fjords lie below sea level because of what combination?
Rising seas and sinking land
The Pacific Plate diving under North America drags the Kenai Mountains down into the sea.
Q 17How deep can the floors of the park's fjords lie below present sea level?
600 to 1,000 feet
Glaciers over-deepened them; one fjord's glacier has retreated 4.5 miles from the sill where the bay once ended.
Q 18Which fjord, 33 miles south of the gateway town with a tidewater glacier at its head, is the park's most visited?
Aialik Bay
Its name comes from Russians recording the Native name Ayalyk; Holgate Glacier flows into one of its arms.
Q 19How big is Kenai Fjords National Park?
About 670,000 acres
That is about 88 percent the size of Yosemite, small by Alaska standards, ranking 11th of the state's 13 parks in area.
Q 20Kenai Fjords is about what fraction of the size of Yosemite?
88%
It is the fifth most-visited park in Alaska and the closest national park to Anchorage.
About 20 miles of headlands, 4 percent of the coast, were oiled; heavy spring runoff kept the oil out of the fjords.
Q 24How much did Exxon pay into a restoration fund in its 1991 settlement?
About $870 million
The oil had turned into a tarry emulsion that could not be skimmed and had to be dredged; cleanup ran through 1991.
Q 25Which marine mammal rehab centre in Seward, partly funded by Exxon Valdez money, works with Kenai Fjords park?
Alaska SeaLife Center
It opened in May 1998 and is Alaska's only permanent marine mammal rehab facility; the settlement covered $37.5 million of its $55 million cost.
Q 26Which sea lion is a highlight of park boat tours?
Steller
Sea otters, harbor seals, Dall's porpoises, humpbacks and orcas round out the marine mammal cast.
Q 27Which two puffin species nest in the park?
Tufted and horned
Common and thick-billed murres and marbled murrelets share the cliffs; Peale's peregrine falcons and bald eagles nest inland.
Q 28What are the first plants to colonise land freshly exposed by retreating glaciers in the park?
Lichens and mosses
Dwarf fireweed and yellow dryas follow, then a nitrogen-fixing shrub, willows, cottonwoods and finally spruce and hemlock.
Q 29Which shrub, able to fix nitrogen, enriches raw glacial soil for the trees that follow?
Sitka alder
Mature forest here is Sitka spruce and mountain hemlock over devil's club, blueberry and lady fern.
Q 30At roughly what elevation is the tree line in Kenai Fjords?
750 to 1,000 feet
Above it, dwarf shrubs under a foot high grow painfully slowly and are easily wrecked by boots.