Theodore Roosevelt National Park Trivia
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47 free Theodore Roosevelt National Park trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Theodore Roosevelt National Park trivia quiz covers the badlands of western North Dakota where a grieving young New Yorker went to ranch in the 1880s and came back a conservationist. It is the only U.S. national park named for a single person, split into a North Unit, a South Unit and the remote Elkhorn Ranch site, all threaded by the Little Missouri River and the Maah Daah Hey Trail. Questions cover the bison, wild horses, prairie dogs and elk, the scenic drives and wilderness, and the little cowboy town of Medora at the gate. There is plenty of history too: TR's 1883 buffalo hunt, the death of his wife and mother on the same day, the Maltese Cross Cabin and the Elkhorn Ranch, the boat thieves he marched to Dickinson, the starvation winter of 1886-87, the French Marquis de Morès and his meat-packing scheme, the CCC camps, and the park's odd path from wildlife refuge to 'national memorial park' to national park in 1978. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one, so it works for an I-94 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 Badlands, Yellowstone and US National Parks quizzes next.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Theodore Roosevelt National Park is in the badlands of which U.S. state?
North Dakota
North Dakota. Roosevelt was no tourist in these badlands: in the 1880s he ran two cattle ranches here, in what was then Dakota Territory.
Q 02Which sportsmen's club did Theodore Roosevelt help found in 1887, after watching the badlands' big game vanish?
Boone and Crockett Club
Boone and Crockett Club. Roosevelt had come west to shoot big game before it disappeared; his club made 'fair chase' its code and pressed Congress to protect Yellowstone.
Q 03Travelers on Interstate 94 get their first look into Theodore Roosevelt National Park from which rest-area overlook?
Painted Canyon
Painted Canyon. It is named for the bands of colour in its rock layers, and its visitor center doubles as a highway rest area: the only glimpse of the park many drivers ever get.
Q 04Which river flows through all three units of Theodore Roosevelt National Park?
Little Missouri
Little Missouri. The river did more than pass through: it carved these badlands, cutting faster and deeper after Ice Age glaciers blocked its old northward course to Hudson Bay.
Q 05Theodore Roosevelt first came to the badlands in September 1883 to hunt which animal?
Bison
Roosevelt came to shoot a bison and got one after days of hunting; smitten with the 'perfect freedom' of the West, he bought into a cattle ranch before going home.
Q 06What double loss on Valentine's Day 1884 sent Theodore Roosevelt back to his badlands ranch?
His wife and mother died
His wife and mother died hours apart: Mittie of typhoid fever, then Alice, two days after giving birth. Roosevelt drew a large X in his diary and wrote, 'The light has gone out of my life.'
Q 07Roosevelt's first ranch, seven miles south of Medora, was known by what name?
Maltese Cross
Maltese Cross. Ranches went by their cattle brands, and this one's was an eight-pointed Maltese cross; on paper it was the Chimney Butte Ranch, but locals knew it by the brand.
Q 08Roosevelt's second, more remote ranch, 35 miles north of Medora, was called what?
Elkhorn
Elkhorn. Roosevelt called it his home ranch, but once he gave it up the buildings were stripped, and by 1901 nothing was left of the house except its foundation stones.
Q 09Roosevelt hired two woodsmen from which state to run his second ranch?
Maine
Maine. Bill Sewall and Wilmot Dow had guided Roosevelt's hunting trips there; more at home riding logs than horses, they spent their first badlands winter building his ranch house from cottonwood.
Q 10After thieves stole his boat in spring 1886, what did rancher Theodore Roosevelt do?
Chased and arrested them himself
Chased and arrested them himself. Roosevelt and two ranch hands built a boat and followed the thieves down the icy river for days; he had packed Tolstoy's Anna Karenina to read on the way to the jail in Dickinson.
Q 11What killed about 60 percent of Theodore Roosevelt's badlands cattle in the late 1880s?
A brutal winter
A brutal winter. Snow and cold in 1886-87 killed cattle by the hundred thousand across the West, and Roosevelt began selling off his herds and never ranched in earnest again.
Q 12Which of these books grew out of Theodore Roosevelt's own years as a badlands rancher?
The Wilderness Hunter
The Wilderness Hunter, one of his three books on ranch and hunting life. Roosevelt did some of his writing at a small desk in his badlands ranch house, and the park still keeps it.
Q 13Roosevelt sold his last badlands cattle in 1898, the year he helped lead which cavalry regiment to Cuba?
Q 21Which cattle breed does Theodore Roosevelt National Park keep in its North Unit to recall the 1880s trail drives?
Longhorn
Longhorn. Drovers once pushed herds from as far as Texas through what is now the North Unit on the Long X Trail, so since 1967 the park has kept a few longhorn steers on show there.
Q 22Which trail links the North and South units of Theodore Roosevelt National Park across the grassland between them?
Maah Daah Hey
Maah Daah Hey. The trail runs 144 miles, but mountain bikers must leave it and detour around the park, where bicycles are banned from every trail.
Q 23The trail linking Theodore Roosevelt National Park's units is named in the language of which people, Lewis and Clark's 1804 winter hosts?
Mandan
The Rough Riders
The Rough Riders. Cowboys, prospectors and hunters filled its ranks beside college men, and Roosevelt quit his desk as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to go to war with them.
Q 14Where has Roosevelt's first ranch cabin been displayed since 1959?
At the South Unit Visitor Center
At the South Unit Visitor Center, since 1959. Before that the cabin went on tour: the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, Portland's 1905 exposition, then a place on the state capitol grounds.
Q 15Roosevelt's first cabin was unusual for the northern plains for its steeply pitched roof, which created what?
An upstairs sleeping loft
An upstairs sleeping loft. The ranch hands slept up there while Roosevelt kept a bedroom of his own below, one of three rooms in a cabin bigger than most frontier homes.
Q 16Which piece of furniture did Roosevelt call something no 'true American' could fail to enjoy?
A rocking chair
A rocking chair. The aside comes from his account of summer evenings on the ranch veranda, where tired men sat book in hand but mostly just rocked and gazed out at the buttes.
Q 17Which president signed the postwar act creating Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park, the only park ever given that title?
Harry Truman
Harry Truman, on April 25, 1947. A year earlier he had vetoed the first park bill, advised that these badlands lacked the outstanding scenery a national park demands.
Q 18When Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park became a full national park in 1978, over a third of it was protected as what?
Designated wilderness
Designated wilderness. President Carter signed the law in November 1978, and it set aside 29,920 acres where no road or building may ever be built.
Q 19Just before Congress made it a park in 1947, the Roosevelt badlands briefly held which status?
A national wildlife refuge
A national wildlife refuge, from November 1946. The badlands had been judged below national park standard and handed to the Fish and Wildlife Service; the following April a compromise law made them a park after all.
Q 20The South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park holds one of the largest U.S. concentrations of what?
Petrified wood
Petrified wood. By the park's reckoning only Petrified Forest National Park and Yellowstone hold more; the stumps are sequoias and other giant trees buried soon after the dinosaurs died out.
Mandan. The phrase is said to mean an area that has been, or will be, around for a long time; the turtle on the trail's marker posts, though, is a symbol borrowed from the Lakota.
Q 24Where have most of the surplus bison rounded up in Theodore Roosevelt National Park been sent?
Native American tribes
Native American tribes. The fenced range can feed only so many animals, so every few years the park rounds up its herds and trucks the surplus to tribal lands, where they build up the tribes' own herds.
Q 25Which free-roaming animals, recognised as 'historical setting' in 1970, descend from bands that eluded a 1954 round-up?
Wild horses
Wild horses. For years the Park Service tried to clear every horse out of the park; today the herd is kept as a living reminder of the open-range ranching Roosevelt knew.
Q 26Which overlook marks the end of the North Unit's scenic drive in Theodore Roosevelt National Park?
Oxbow Overlook
Oxbow Overlook, where the 14-mile drive ends. The name fits: an oxbow is a looping U-shaped meander, and the free-flowing river below keeps shifting its course with every flood cycle.
Q 27Which burrowing rodent is Theodore Roosevelt National Park's keystone species, mixing soils and feeding predators?
Prairie dog
Prairie dog. Their constant clipping keeps a dog town's plants fresh and more nutritious, which is why pronghorn and other big grazers come there to feed.
Q 28Which apex predator is missing from the badlands of Theodore Roosevelt National Park today?
Wolves
Wolves. With wolves and brown bears gone, nothing preys on the park's big grazers, so rangers must round up and thin the herds themselves to keep the range from being eaten bare.
Q 29Which law-enforcement post did Theodore Roosevelt hold in Billings County during his ranching years?
Deputy sheriff
Deputy sheriff. Roosevelt threw himself into badlands public life: he also helped organise the local stockmen's association so that ranchers could tackle overgrazing and other shared problems together.
Q 30Which French nobleman founded Medora in 1883 and named it after his wife?
Marquis de Morès
The Marquis de Morès named the town for his wife, Medora von Hoffman, a New York banker's daughter whose family money paid for his ventures; their 26-room summer house is now a museum.