Yosemite National Park Trivia
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96 free Yosemite National Park trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Yosemite National Park trivia quiz covers the granite valley in California's Sierra Nevada that gave the world the very idea of a national park. It ranges across Half Dome and its cables, El Capitan and the Nose, Yosemite Falls, Bridalveil and the February 'firefall' glow on Horsetail Fall, the giant sequoias of the Mariposa Grove, Tuolumne Meadows and Tioga Pass, the Ahwahnee Hotel and the bears that once broke into cars. There is plenty of history too: the Ahwahneechee and the Mariposa Battalion of 1851, Galen Clark and Lincoln's 1864 grant, John Muir's glaciers-not-earthquakes theory and his 1903 camping trip with Theodore Roosevelt, the Buffalo Soldiers who patrolled the park, the flooding of Hetch Hetchy, the first female ranger, the Firefall from Glacier Point and the fall of the Wawona Tunnel Tree. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one, so it works for a Tunnel View picnic 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 Sequoia, Grand Canyon and US National Parks quizzes next.
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Q 01Yosemite's snow-fed waterfalls are at their fullest in which season?
Spring
Spring is the season to go: snowmelt peaks in May or June, and by August some of the park's most famous falls have shrunk to a trickle or dried up entirely.
Q 02Which president signed the 1864 Yosemite Grant, the first land the federal government set aside for preservation and public use?
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant on June 30, 1864, in the middle of the Civil War; its promise of scenic land held 'inalienable for all time' became the model for the national parks that followed.
Q 03Under the 1864 Yosemite Grant, who was handed the valley and the big sequoia grove to manage as a park?
The State of California
The State of California ran the valley and the sequoia grove as a state park until 1906, when Congress and the president accepted them back into federal control.
Q 04Yosemite became a national park in 1890, 18 years after which park became America's first?
Yellowstone
Yellowstone became America's first national park in 1872, yet it followed Yosemite's lead: the 1864 grant protecting the valley had set the precedent for keeping scenic land public.
Q 05Which company named version 10.10 of its desktop operating system after Yosemite in 2014?
Apple
Apple had named a decade of Mac systems after big cats before switching to California places in 2013; OS X Yosemite followed in October 2014 as a free upgrade.
Q 06Which president went camping in Yosemite with John Muir in May 1903?
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt camped with Muir in May 1903, waking near Glacier Point under fresh snow; Muir pressed him to protect the valley, and in 1906 Roosevelt signed the bill adding it to the national park.
Q 07Who explored Yosemite's biggest sequoia grove in the 1850s and became the Yosemite Grant's first guardian?
Galen Clark
Galen Clark went to the mountains after a lung haemorrhage to find a cure or end his days there; instead he lived to 95 and served two long stints as the grant's guardian.
Q 08Which Yosemite dome, rising nearly 5,000 feet above the valley floor, is the park's best-known landmark?
Half Dome
Half Dome never lost a half: geologists call that an illusion of the view from the valley, since the dome is really a thin ridge of rock and most of the original is still there.
Q 09How did George Anderson first climb Yosemite's famous dome in 1875?
Drilling eye bolts
Drilling eye bolts into the smooth rock got George Anderson to the top in October 1875, after a state survey report had declared the dome 'perfectly inaccessible' and never to be trodden by human foot.
Q 10Hikers finish the trail up Yosemite's famous dome by hauling themselves up the final 400 feet using what?
A pair of steel cables
A pair of steel cables has run up the dome's steep east side since 1919; crews raise them onto posts each May and take them down again in October.
Q 11What must hikers obtain before climbing to the top of Yosemite's famous dome?
A permit
A permit is needed to thin the crowds on the final stretch: at most 300 hikers a day may go up, and most of the places are handed out by lottery.
Q 12Who led the 1957 first ascent of the sheer northwest face of Yosemite's famous dome, America's first Grade VI climb?
Royal Robbins
Royal Robbins, Jerry Gallwas and Mike Sherrick took five days in June 1957; rival Warren Harding, who had planned his own attempt, hiked up the back to meet them on the summit.
Q 13Which 3,000-foot monolith on the north side of Yosemite Valley is a world-famous big-wall climbing site?
El Capitan
Q 21Which grand Yosemite Valley hotel, opened in 1927, inspired the Overlook Hotel's interiors in The Shining?
The Ahwahnee
The Ahwahnee never appears on screen: Kubrick's designers copied its Great Lounge for the Overlook's Colorado Lounge and built the set in a studio in England.
Q 22Why was Yosemite's grand valley hotel renamed the 'Majestic Yosemite Hotel' from 2016 to 2019?
A trademark dispute
A trademark dispute forced the change: the departing concessionaire claimed it owned the park's historic names, so they were swapped out until a 2019 settlement brought the originals back.
Q 23Which grove near Wawona is Yosemite's largest stand of giant sequoias, with several hundred mature trees?
El Capitan's sheer walls were once thought unclimbable; since a first team got up in 1958, they have become the proving ground of big-wall climbers from all over the world.
Q 14Which bird of prey nests on Yosemite's cliffs, closing some climbing routes for part of each year?
Peregrine falcon
Peregrine falcons were nearly wiped out by the pesticide DDT, which thinned their eggshells; climbers helped biologists reach the cliff nests, and routes near them still close while chicks are raised.
Q 15Roughly how many days of climbing did the 1958 first ascent of the Nose, Yosemite's famous big-wall route, take?
47
About 47 days of climbing, 45 by some counts, went into the first ascent because Warren Harding's team worked in siege style, fixing ropes up the wall and linking camps along the route like an expedition.
Q 16Which climber, later famous for the Dawn Wall, free-climbed the Nose with his then-wife Beth Rodden in 2005?
Tommy Caldwell
Tommy Caldwell and Beth Rodden swapped leads to free every pitch in October 2005; two days later he went back and free-climbed the whole route again in under 12 hours.
Q 17Which waterfall, dropping 2,425 feet in three stages, is the tallest in Yosemite National Park?
Yosemite Falls
Yosemite Falls drops 2,425 feet in three stages, the upper fall alone 1,430 feet, yet the park's tallest waterfall often runs completely dry by August.
Q 18Which low-volume Yosemite Valley waterfall has the park's highest single vertical drop, 1,612 feet?
Ribbon Fall
Ribbon Fall plunges 1,612 feet in one unbroken drop from the valley's north rim, west of the great monolith; fed by a small creek, it usually runs dry by midsummer.
Q 19Which small waterfall on the eastern edge of Yosemite's great monolith glows orange at sunset for a few February evenings?
Horsetail Fall
Horsetail Fall, a seasonal thread of water off the monolith's east buttress, catches the low February sun at dusk and glows like lava when skies are clear and snowmelt is flowing.
Q 20What was the Yosemite Firefall, a nightly summer show that ended in 1968?
Embers pushed off a cliff
Embers pushed off a cliff at Glacier Point fell 3,000 feet in a glowing stream; the custom is said to have begun in the 1870s, when a hotel keeper kicked his campfire coals over the edge to end the evening.
Mariposa Grove
Mariposa Grove, by the park's south entrance, reopened in June 2018 after a three-year restoration to get roads and buildings off the roots of its ancient trees.
Q 24What became of the Wawona Tunnel Tree, the Yosemite sequoia that carriages drove through from 1881?
It fell under heavy snow
It fell under heavy snow in February 1969, 88 years after the tunnel was cut through its base; the park left the giant lying where it landed, and visitors still walk out to see it.
Q 25Which valley in Yosemite's northwest was dammed in 1923 to supply San Francisco with water, over John Muir's opposition?
Hetch Hetchy
Hetch Hetchy was flooded behind a dam finished in 1923, after a fight John Muir lost: 'As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and churches,' he had protested.
Q 26Which outdoor clothing brand's logo is a stylised drawing of Yosemite's most famous dome?
The North Face
The North Face was founded in San Francisco in the 1960s to supply climbers, so in 1971 it took the dome's outline as its logo and has kept it ever since.
Q 27Which river drains the entire northern part of Yosemite National Park?
Tuolumne
The Tuolumne rises below the park's highest peaks, cuts its own 'Grand Canyon' through the high country, then fills the reservoir that sends drinking water to San Francisco.
Q 28Which river flows through Yosemite Valley itself?
Merced
The Merced River runs the length of Yosemite Valley; Ice Age glaciers widened its V-shaped canyon into the flat-floored, U-shaped valley that visitors see today.
Q 29What is the highest point in Yosemite National Park, at about 13,120 feet?
Mount Lyell
Mount Lyell carries what was once the park's largest glacier, but the ice has shrunk so much that a 2013 study found it no longer moves, making it an ice field and not a glacier.
Q 30Which pass on State Route 120 is Yosemite's eastern gate and the highest highway pass in the Sierra Nevada?
Tioga
Tioga Pass carries State Route 120 over the Sierra crest at the park's east entrance; snow normally closes it from November until late May or June.