Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free Petrified Forest National Park trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Petrified Forest National Park trivia quiz covers the northeastern Arizona park where 225-million-year-old trees lie scattered across the badlands as solid quartz. It ranges across the Painted Desert and its Chinle Formation, the phytosaurs and early dinosaurs dug from Blue Mesa, the Puerco Pueblo and its petroglyphs, Agate House, the Painted Desert Inn with its Fred Kabotie murals, and the strip of old Route 66 that the park still preserves. There is plenty of history too: the 1853 Whipple survey that named Lithodendron Wash, the Army camel road, John Muir's excavations, Theodore Roosevelt making it America's second national monument in 1906, the CCC years, national park status in 1962, and the endless fight against wood theft that fills the rangers' Conscience Pile. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one, so it works for an I-40 road-trip game or a serious park-nerd challenge. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. If you enjoy it, try our Grand Canyon, Saguaro and US National Parks quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Petrified Forest National Park is in which U.S. state?
Arizona
It straddles Navajo and Apache counties, with the Navajo Nation on its northern border.
Q 02The Painted Desert's name is translated from which Spanish phrase used by early explorers?
El Desierto Pintado
Oddly, the park's oldest Spanish inscriptions date only to the late 19th century, left by descendants of the colonists.
Q 03The park is named for its large deposits of what?
Fossilised wood
The park covers about 346 square miles of shrub steppe and colourful eroded hills.
Q 04What geographic term describes the park's colourful, deeply eroded and mostly bare hills?
Badlands
Swelling bentonite clay cracks the surface and keeps plants from taking hold, which leaves the slopes bare to erosion.
Q 05The park's fossil trees lived during which geologic epoch, about 225 million years ago?
Late Triassic
At the time the region sat near the equator on the edge of the supercontinent Pangaea, humid and subtropical.
Q 06Which rock formation holds the park's fossil logs and gives the Painted Desert its colours?
Chinle
It is up to 800 feet thick in the park and full of bentonite clay that swells when wet, which is why little grows on the eroded slopes.
Q 07What mineral, dissolved from volcanic ash, replaced the organic matter to petrify the logs?
Silica
Traces of iron oxide and other impurities give the wood its reds, yellows and purples.
Q 08Most of the park's petrified wood comes from which extinct conifer?
Araucarioxylon arizonicum
At least nine species of fossil trees have been identified in the park, and every one of them is extinct.
Q 09Which crocodile-like giant reptiles are among the park's most famous fossil animals?
Phytosaurs
A phytosaur skull found near Blue Mesa in 1919 by Ynez Mexia kicked off decades of digging by Berkeley palaeontologists.
Q 10Which president used the brand-new Antiquities Act to make the area a national monument in 1906?
Theodore Roosevelt
It was only the second national monument ever proclaimed, and the territorial legislature had been asking for a park since 1895.
Q 11In what year did the monument become a national park?
1962
Wilderness areas followed in 1970, and a 2004 law authorised more than doubling the park to 218,533 acres.
Q 12Roughly how much petrified wood is estimated to be stolen from the park every year?
About 12 tons
The fine is $325, and seven rangers plus fences and signs still cannot stop it.
Q 13Wood mailed back by guilty visitors cannot be returned to its original spot, so rangers put it where?
The Conscience Pile
Returned pieces often arrive with letters blaming the 'curse' of the wood for years of bad luck.
Q 21Which conservationist first excavated the park's 200-room ruin in 1905-06 and urged its protection?
John Muir
He never published his findings, but fossils he collected sit in the University of California Museum of Paleontology.
Q 22Most of the park's petroglyphs are pecked into what dark surface coating on the rocks?
Desert varnish
Most of the park's rock art is thought to be between 650 and 2,000 years old.
Q 23Descendants of the park's Ancestral Puebloans live on the Hopi Mesas and at which pueblo?
Zuni
More than 1,000 archaeological sites have been recorded in the park.
Q 14Which historic transcontinental highway crossed the park until 1985 and survives as a grassy strip inside it?
U.S. Route 66
The interstate, the BNSF railway and a river all still cross the park along roughly the same east-west line.
Q 15Which interstate crosses the park, alongside the BNSF railway?
I-40
More than 60 BNSF trains, mostly freight, rumble through the park every day.
Q 16Which town about 26 miles west of park headquarters is the nearest city?
Holbrook
There is no campground or lodging inside the park, so most visitors sleep in Holbrook's motels.
Q 17Lt. Amiel Whipple's 1853 survey named a wash in the park Lithodendron Creek, which means what?
Stone Tree
Geologist Jules Marcou on the same expedition correctly pegged the trees as Triassic.
Q 18A wagon road built along the 35th parallel in 1857-60 experimented with what pack animal?
Camels
The 35th Parallel Route, also known as the Beale Camel Trail, is now on the National Register of Historic Places.
Q 19Which small ancestral Puebloan structure in the park was built almost entirely of petrified wood?
Agate House
The eight-room pueblo dates to about 900-1200 CE and was partly rebuilt by the CCC in 1933-34.
Q 20Which large pueblo of roughly 200 rooms overlooks a river near the middle of the park?
Puerco
Perhaps 200 people lived there at its peak; the last residents left around 1380 CE, probably driven out by drought.
Q 24Roughly how long ago did the park's first human inhabitants, the Clovis-era people, arrive?
About 13,000 years ago
Clovis and Folsom spear points made of petrified wood are among the oldest artefacts found there.
Q 25Which architect, known for her Grand Canyon buildings, revised the Painted Desert Inn after WWII?
Mary Jane Colter
Under her the inn ran as a Fred Harvey House from 1947 until 1963.
Q 26Which Hopi artist painted the murals inside the Painted Desert Inn in 1947-48?
Fred Kabotie
One mural shows a journey through the Painted Desert to collect salt.
Q 27The 1920s inn that preceded the Painted Desert Inn had what nickname, thanks to its building material?
Stone Tree House
The CCC rebuilt it in Pueblo Revival style between 1937 and 1940 to designs by NPS architect Lyle Bennett.
Q 28Which modernist architect designed the Painted Desert Visitor Center?
Richard Neutra
It is an unusual Mission 66-era modernist complex in a park better known for Pueblo Revival and petrified logs.
Q 29Which is the park's only venomous snake?
Prairie rattlesnake
Gopher snakes, which imitate rattlers when disturbed, are far more common.
Q 30Which fast grassland mammal, capable of 60 mph sprints, roams the park?
Pronghorn
They are the second-fastest land animal on Earth after the cheetah.