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144 free National Park trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
10 free National Park trivia questions with answers. National Park trivia lives in two places on BrainPickle. This page is the shorter set; the main quiz is National Parks trivia, with our deepest question pool on the topic and a source behind every answer.
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Q 01Which U.S. state contains the highest number of national parks?
California
California leads with nine national parks, followed by Alaska with eight, making it the state with the most national parks.
Q 02Which reserve, set aside in 1872, is widely held to be the first and oldest national park in the world?
Yellowstone
Yellowstone was created by an Act of Congress on 1 March 1872, set aside as a 'public park or pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people', words later carved on its Roosevelt Arch.
Q 03Banff, proclaimed in 1885, was the first national park of which country?
Canada
Canada's Banff National Park began in 1885 as the Banff Hot Springs Reserve, a 26-square-kilometre tract around the Cave and Basin springs, after rival claims to the springs.
Q 04More than 1.5 million of which animal make up the Serengeti's great migration?
Wildebeest
About 1.5 million blue wildebeest make the circular Serengeti–Masai Mara migration each year, joined by some 250,000 zebra and hundreds of thousands of Thomson's gazelle.
Q 05Kruger, spanning Limpopo and Mpumalanga, became the first national park of which country in 1926?
South Africa
Kruger became South Africa's first national park under the National Parks Act of 1926; parts of the area had been protected by Paul Kruger's Transvaal government from 1898.
Q 06The world's largest national park, about 972,000 square kilometres, is in the north-east of which island?
Greenland
Northeast Greenland National Park, established in 1974 and expanded in 1988, covers about 972,000 square kilometres, larger than all but around thirty countries.
Q 07The Galapagos Islands are protected as the first national park of which country?
Ecuador
Galápagos National Park, Ecuador's first, was declared in 1959 and began operating in 1968; it was among the first UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1978.
Q 08Indonesia founded a Lesser Sunda national park in 1980 to protect which reptile?
Komodo dragon
Komodo National Park was established in 1980 to protect the Komodo dragon, first described by science in 1912 after Dutch reports of giant reptiles on the island.
Q 09Tongariro, whose peaks were conveyed to the Crown in 1887, is the oldest national park in which country?
New Zealand
Tongariro was New Zealand's first national park: Ngāti Tūwharetoa chief Te Heuheu Tūkino IV gifted the sacred peaks to the Crown in 1887, and the Tongariro National Park Act passed in 1894.
Q 10Which country is home to the UNESCO-listed Plitvice Lakes national park?
Croatia
Plitvice Lakes, Croatia's oldest and largest national park, was founded in 1949 and added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1979 for its sixteen terraced lakes.
Q 11The first area to use 'national park' in its founding legislation was created in 1875 where in Michigan?
Mackinac Island
Mackinac later lost its national park status and became a Michigan state park.
Q 12Australia's first national park, proclaimed near Sydney in 1879, got what name in 1955?
Royal
It came seven years after Yellowstone and eleven before Yosemite; the 'Royal' was added after Queen Elizabeth II's 1954 visit.
Q 13Which country created Europe's first national parks, a set of nine, in 1909?
Sweden
Sweden created Europe's first national parks in 1909, nine at once including Abisko and Sarek; Switzerland followed with the Swiss National Park in 1914.
Q 21The word Yosemite comes from a Miwok term meaning what?
They are killers
Yosemite derives from the Miwok yohhe'meti, 'they are killers', the Miwok name for the Ahwahneechee people of the valley, which they themselves called Ahwahnee, 'big mouth'.
Q 22Which president signed the act making the Grand Canyon a national park in 1919?
Woodrow Wilson
Roosevelt had made it a game preserve in 1906 and a national monument in 1908 but never got the park bill through.
Q 23Kruger National Park grew out of which game reserve, established in 1898?
Sabie
The Sabie Game Reserve, proclaimed in 1898, was merged with the Shingwedzi reserve to form Kruger in 1926; James Stevenson-Hamilton, Sabie's warden from 1902, became Kruger's first warden.
Q 14Africa's first national park, created in 1925 by King Albert I, is in which modern country?
DR Congo
Albert National Park, created in the Belgian Congo in 1925 by King Albert I, lies in today's DR Congo and was renamed Virunga National Park in 1969.
Q 15The United Kingdom's first national park, designated in 1951, was which?
The Peak District
The Peak District was designated on 17 April 1951, the first under the 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act; the Lake District followed in May and Snowdonia in October.
Q 16Which English poet called the Lake District a 'sort of national property' in 1810?
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth wrote in his 1810 Guide to the Lakes that the Lake District was 'a sort of national property', six decades before Yellowstone became the first national park.
Q 17Which US president signed the 1864 act ceding Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove to California?
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant Act on 30 June 1864, giving Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove to California; doubts about state management later pushed Yellowstone under federal control.
Q 18Who is known as the 'Father of the National Parks' for his work in Yosemite?
John Muir
John Muir, the Scottish-born naturalist who co-founded the Sierra Club in 1892, is called the 'Father of the National Parks' for his campaign that made Yosemite a national park in 1890.
Q 19Argentina's first national park, created in 1934 through the initiative of Francisco Moreno, is which?
Nahuel Huapi
Nahuel Huapi, around the Patagonian lake of that name, grew from land Francisco Moreno donated in 1903 and became Argentina's first national park in 1934.
Q 20As of 2025, how many US National Park Service units were designated 'National Park'?
63
Sixty-three of the roughly 430 National Park Service units carried the 'National Park' title in 2025, New River Gorge (2020) being the 63rd; the rest are monuments, seashores, historic sites and battlefields.
Q 24Which Fiordland bird, presumed extinct, was rediscovered in the Murchison Mountains in 1948?
Takahē
The South Island takahē, unrecorded since 1898, was rediscovered by Geoffrey Orbell near Lake Te Anau in November 1948; the Murchison Mountains of Fiordland National Park became its sanctuary.
Q 25Sagarmatha National Park in Nepal, established in 1976, tops out at the summit of which mountain?
Mount Everest
Sagarmatha is the Nepali name for Mount Everest; the park, created in 1976 and World Heritage-listed in 1979, climbs from 2,845 m at Monjo to the 8,848 m summit.
Q 26Which country's park lies directly across the river from Argentina's Iguazú National Park?
Brazil
The Brazilian side is Iguaçu National Park, spelled the Portuguese way.
Q 27Chitwan, Nepal's first national park, was created mainly to save which animal?
The one-horned rhinoceros
Nepal's first conservation law, in 1957, was likewise aimed at protecting rhinos and their habitat.
Q 28Which Wales-sized Australian park is second only to Munga-Thirri–Simpson Desert in area?
Kakadu
Kakadu in the Northern Territory covers about 19,800 square kilometres, roughly the size of Wales; Aboriginal traditional owners, on the land for some 60,000 years, manage it jointly with Parks Australia.
Q 29Which uranium mine, closed in January 2021, sits inside a Northern Territory national park?
Ranger
The Ranger uranium mine, enclosed by Kakadu National Park near Jabiru, stopped processing ore in January 2021 after forty years; Olympic Dam and Beverley are in South Australia.
Q 30Under what name did President Taft protect the future Zion National Park as a monument in 1909?
Mukuntuweap
Taft proclaimed Mukuntuweap National Monument on 31 July 1909, using the Paiute name for the canyon; it was renamed Zion in 1918 and became a national park in 1919.