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50 free Camp trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
40 free Camp trivia questions with answers. Camp trivia is its own category: part history, part outdoors know-how, part the folklore that only exists between a fire ring and a cabin bunk. This quiz covers all three. You will find the Connecticut school that ran the first organised camp in 1861, the Girl Scout cookbook that first printed a s'more recipe, and the reason marshmallows are named after a wetland weed. The campfire trivia half goes after the fire itself - tinder, fire rings, putting one out properly - plus the songs, the ghost stories, Smokey Bear's actual slogan and the seven Leave No Trace principles that took a decade of argument to settle on. Questions run from easy ones a first-year camper can take to expert-level detail on gear history and camp origins, and every answer is written against an encyclopaedic or official source with the sentence that proves it attached. Print it for a rainy cabin afternoon, a campfire quiz round, or the bus ride up.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The first organised US summer camp is usually credited to a camp founded in 1861 in which state?
Connecticut
Frederick W. Gunn ran it for schoolboys as a fortnight of outdoor living, and the idea took thirty years to spread.
Q 02How many camps did the American Camp Association count in the United States in 2024?
About 20,000
Enrolment has been drifting down for years, blamed on smaller families and the rise of summer tutoring programmes.
Q 03In 1900 there were fewer than 100 camps in the United States. How many were running by 1918?
Over 1,000
Girls' camps had only begun appearing around 1900, most of them clustered in New England.
Q 04In the US and Canada, residential places where children stay overnight are known as what?
Sleepaway camps
For many children it is the first extended stretch of time they have ever spent away from home.
Q 05What three things make up a s'more?
Toasted marshmallow, chocolate and graham crackers
The name is a contraction of 'some more', and its ancestor was a buttered marshmallow on a saltine called the Marshmallow Marguerite.
Q 06Which organisation printed the earliest known recipe for the treat, in 1927?
The Girl Scouts
Newspapers had described their members eating 'Some-mores' as early as 1925, in Connecticut.
Q 07The word marshmallow comes from a plant that grows where?
In marshes
Althaea officinalis was used by ancient Egyptians to soothe coughs and sore throats long before anyone thought of toasting it.
Q 08Which four ingredients make up a modern marshmallow?
Sugar, water, air and a whipping agent
Alex Doumak's 1956 extrusion patent, squeezing the mixture out as a long rope, is what made mass production possible.
Q 09Who patented the extrusion process that turned marshmallow-making into a factory job?
Alex Doumak
Before that, marshmallow was poured into starch moulds one shape at a time, which capped output badly.
Q 10What is the safest place to build a campfire?
In an established fire ring
Where none exists, bare rock or unvegetated ground works, and turf can be lifted and replaced once the ashes are cold.
Q 11What is the correct way to put out a campfire?
Drown it, stir it and drown it again
Checking for live embers matters more than the first bucket: a fire that looks dead can smoulder in the duff for hours.
Q 12In fire-building, what is 'tinder'?
Material thin enough to catch from a spark
Birch bark, cedar bark, fatwood and dead pine needles all work; before matches, the standard was amadou struck with flint and steel.
Q 13Which chemical in poison ivy sap causes the rash?
Urushiol
Q 21Where was the first experimental Scout camp held, in 1907?
Brownsea Island
Robert Baden-Powell ran it while writing the book that would launch the whole movement.
Q 22Camp Fire, founded in 1910, was set up as the sister organisation to what?
The Boy Scouts of America
It was the first nonsectarian, multicultural organisation for girls in America, and admitted boys from 1975.
Q 23Which country's soldiers bought 60,000 Euklisia Rugs, the 1876 ancestor of the sleeping bag?
Russia
The Welsh mail-order pioneer Pryce Pryce-Jones designed it with a built-in pocket for an inflatable pillow.
Between 15 and 25 per cent of people have no reaction at all, though repeat exposure usually makes things worse rather than better.
Q 14Poison ivy leaves grow in clusters of how many leaflets?
Three
The plant is a shape-shifter otherwise, growing as ground cover, shrub or climbing vine depending on where it takes hold.
Q 15Smokey Bear's original 1944 slogan promised that care would prevent what?
9 out of 10 forest fires
The famous 'Only YOU' line arrived in 1947 and lasted until 2001, when 'forest fires' became 'wildfires'.
Q 16In 2001 Smokey's warning was updated to name what instead?
Wildfires
The point was to cover grass and scrub country too, and to make clear the campaign was not against controlled burns.
Q 17What was Smokey doing in his first 1944 poster?
Pouring water on a campfire
The artist Albert Staehle dressed him in jeans and a campaign hat, and 9 August is still counted as the character's birthday.
Q 18How many principles does the Leave No Trace outdoor ethic have?
Seven
The list started at 75 in the early 1990s, collapsed to six, and only settled at its final count in 1999.
Q 19Which campfire song is an African-American spiritual whose title means 'come by here'?
Kum ba yah
The first known recording, made in 1926, is an unaccompanied tenor singing in Gullah, identified only as H. Wylie.
Q 20In which year was the first known recording of that spiritual made?
1926
Folklorist Robert Winslow Gordon collected it; the two oldest datable versions both sit in the Library of Congress.
Q 24What holds up a large tent when there is nothing to pitch it against?
Guy ropes tied to stakes
Sizes run from a bivouac barely big enough to sleep in up to circus tents seating thousands.
Q 25Historically, canoes were built as dugouts or from what?
Bark over a wood frame
Canvas on wood came next, then aluminium, and now most hulls are moulded plastic or composites like fibreglass and kevlar.
Q 26What did 19th-century French confectioners call the whipped mallow-root sweet?
Pate de Guimauve
It was whipped from dried mallow root with sugar, water and egg whites, and sold as a spongy dessert.
Q 27Which mosquitoes bite people?
Only the females
Every mosquito drinks nectar; only the females have mouthparts built to pierce skin, and that is how diseases move.
Q 28How many stages are there in a mosquito's life cycle?
Four
The larvae are a major food source for dragonfly nymphs and fish, which is one argument against draining every pond in sight.
Q 29A Dutch oven used over coals is usually made of what?
Seasoned cast iron
American versions gained legs to stand over the coals and a flanged lid to hold more on top, a design credited to Paul Revere.
Q 30Who is credited with adding legs and a ridged lid to the American camp pot?
Paul Revere
The ridge keeps hot coals sitting on the lid instead of sliding into the stew.