Statistics for 100 years of US National Parks History

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General Stats

This quiz has been taken 34 times
The average score is 62 of 101

Answer Stats

Year	Hint	Answer	% Correct
1919	This president, hunter, and conservationist dies	Theodore Roosevelt	100%
1935	This dam is completed, creating the reservoir that would become Lake Mead National Recreation Area	Hoover Dam	92%
1928	This hotel, named for a nearby geyser, is finally completed with the construction of its west wing	Old Faithful Inn	92%
1920	For the first time, annual visitation of national parks exceeds this round number	1 Million	88%
1954	This famous island, the "gateway to America", shuts its doors after processing more than 12 million immigrants. It would later become part of a National Monument	Ellis Island	88%
1931	Congress passes a law providing for the creation of the first international conservation area in the US, combining Alberta's Waterton Lakes and this US National Park	Glacier	88%
1918	Members of this religious group successfully lobby to rename Mukuntuweap National Monument to Zion National Monument	Mormon	88%
1927	Blasting begins on this monument in the Black Hills	Mount Rushmore	88%
1955	This woman refuses to surrender her seat on a bus, kicking off the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This is one of many events celebrated by the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument	Rosa Parks	88%
1916	This president signs a bill which creates the National Park Service	Woodrow Wilson	88%
1946	Following the end of this war, yearly visitation of national parks quadruples	WWII	88%
1937	This National Scenic Trail, the first of the 'big three', is completed	Appalachian Trail	83%
1921	Denali National Park established kennels for this unique sport	Dogsledding	83%
1939	Marian Anderson sings a concert from this DC National Memorial, because she was barred from Constitution Hall for being black. Nearly 25 years later, Martin Luther King, Jr. would deliver his "I have a dream" speech from the same spot.	Lincoln Memorial	83%
1949	San Juan National Historic Site becomes the first NPS property in this US territory	Puerto Rico	83%
2008	Utah loses a geologic treasure when this sort of feature came crashing down	Sandstone Arch	83%
1989	Despite the efforts of conservation groups, the superindentendent of Yosemite choses not to ban this form of transport from the park	Cars	79%
1967	Just three years after this man ceased to be president, a National Historic Site is established in his honor. No other president has been honored with a NPS site more quickly.	John F. Kennedy	79%
1945	This weapon is tested for the first time in what would become White Sands National Park	Nuclear Bomb	79%
1962	Point Reyes National Seashore becomes the first one along this major body of water	Pacific Ocean	79%
1924	This iconic copper statue is proclaimed a National Monument	Statue of Liberty	79%
2002	Flight 93 National Memorial is established in Pennsylvania to celebrate the heroism of airline passengers during this major tragedy	9/11	75%
1929	Lafayette National Park, the first east of the Mississippi, is renamed to this	Acadia	75%
1933	This alliterative New Deal policy is created, putting young men to work on infrastructure projects in National Parks and other public lands	Civilian Conservation Corps	75%
2012	For the first and only time in the history of Denali National Park, a tourist is killed by one of these animals	Grizzly Bear	75%
1971	This National Monument in southern California, named for the largest species of yucca plant, is redesignated as a National Park	Joshua Tree	75%
2015	Barack Obama forces the USGS to stop referring to Denali by this outdated name, thirty-five years after the park changed its name	Mount McKinley	75%
2010	The "America the Beautiful" mint series is kicked off when Hot Springs National Park was printed on this kind of currency	Quarter	75%
1974	This president leaves office, becoming the first since the passage of the Antiquities Act who did not designate a single national monument	Richard Nixon	75%
1987	This National Historic Trail is designated, in honor of the 46,000 native americans who were forced out of their homeland and made to walk its bitter path	Trail of Tears	75%
1988	Following the establishment of the National Park of American Samoa, the total number of National Parks reaches this round number	50	71%
1977	101 million acres of land in this state is preserved by a single law, including Misty Fjords, Admiralty Island, and Aniakchak National Monuments	Alaska	71%
2005	An unusually wet winter creates a lake for the first time in decades in this National Park in California and Nevada	Death Valley	71%
2013	This state, the last one without an NPS site, is finally given one: the First State National Historical Park	Delaware	71%
1965	This object, the tallest thing in Missouri, is completed. It would later be designated, controversially, as a National Park in 2018	Gateway Arch	71%
1926	Calvin Coolidge refers to this giant sequoia, named after a president and civil war general, as "the Nation's Christmas tree"	General Grant	71%
1950	Congress passes a law which established this national park, but also provided that there would be no further expansion of National Parks or Monuments in Wyoming without congressional approval	Grand Teton	71%
1934	This National Park, the most-visited in the country, is established	Great Smoky Mountains	71%
1972	Congress names the highway between Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks after this oil baron and philanthropist	John D. Rockefeller	71%
1998	Two historic parks, one in the US and one in Canada, celebrate the centennial of this event that brought prospectors to the Yukon	Klondike Gold Rush	71%
2000	Hanford Reach National Monument is established around nuclear facilities that were part of this WWII "project"	Manhattan Project	71%
2007	Two men are convicted for digging up two of these iconic plants from an Arizona national park	Saguaro Cactus	71%
1983	Redwood National Park is used as the filming location for the forest moon of Endor in this movie	Star Wars: Return of the Jedi	71%
1985	The Election Day Floods strike Shenandoah River in this state, with more than 18 inches of rain recorded in a single day in Shenandoah National Park	Virginia	71%
1995	Eight of these mammals are reintroduced to Yellowstone	Wolves	71%
2016	This species, prominently featured on the NPS logo, is named the US National Mammal	Bison	67%
1923	This Utah National Monument, which would later become a National Park, is named in honor of a Mormon pioneer with the first name Ebenezer	Bryce Canyon	67%
1952	This river, which would later be designated as Ohio's only National Park, catches fire due to extreme levels of pollution	Cuyahoga	67%
1948	A National Monmuent is dedicated to preserve this sea fort in Charleston, the site of the first battle of the Civil War	Fort Sumter	67%
1986	This National Park, the only one completely inside Nevada, is established and named after a large endorheic basin that covers much of the Western US	Great Basin	67%
1944	US forces land on Agat Beach on this island as part of the campaign to recapture it. Agat Beach would become the center of the War in the Pacific National Historic Park	Guam	67%
1964	The home of this preservationist and Sierra Club president is protected as a National Historic Site	John Muir	67%
2004	This Nicholas Cage movie features a number of NPS sites, including Independence National Historical Park in Pennsylvania	National Treasure	67%
1960	The Hubbel Trading Post National Historic Site is established to celebrate trade between white settlers and this southwest tribe, on whose reservation the site sits	Navajo	67%
1976	The southern half of Badlands National Park is returned to this native tribe, which now co-manages the park	Oglala Lakota	67%
1940	Kings Canyon National Park, in California, is established along the northern border of this other National Park, forming the first pair of bordering parks	Sequoia	67%
2014	Two boy scout leaders videotape themselves destroying a hoodoo in a park in this state	Utah	67%
1959	This natural disaster strikes in Yellowstone National Park, killing 28	Earthquake	63%
1961	Yogi Bear, a resident of this fictional National Park, appears for the first time in his own show	Jellystone	63%
1979	Protesters against the 1977 national monuments light an effigy of this president on fire	Jimmy Carter	63%
1980	This volcano explodes, killing 57	Mount St. Helens	63%
1981	This park, which contains a 73-mile stretch of Pacific coast, an inland mountain range, and the northernmost rainforest in the US, is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site	Olympic National Park	63%
1982	Construction begins on this National Memorial in DC, which consists of two long, straight walls of black granite etched with names	Vietnam Veterans Memorial	63%
1992	A National Historic Site in Kansas is named after this supreme court case, possibly the most famous in US history	Brown v. Board of Education	58%
1925	This fort, from which Francis Scott Key wrote the national anthem, is designated a National Monument	Fort McHenry	58%
1968	Backlash against development, including nuclear plants to power Miami, leads to the creation of this national monument which would later become a park	Biscayne Bay	54%
1993	This latino rights advocate and co-founder of the National Farm Workers Association dies on his property in California, which would later become a national monument	Cesar Chavez	54%
1973	This landmark piece of legislation is passed, providing for the protection of species near to extinction	Endangered Species Act	54%
1966	Dorothy Richardson Buell is successful in her effort to preserve this stretch of Lake Michigan coastline, which would later become Indiana's first National Park	Indiana Dunes	54%
1969	This pro-LGBT riot, which would be recognized in a National Monument in 2016, occurs in New York	Stonewall	54%
1984	This US territory is included in the Federal Fish & Wildlife Restoration Act	American Samoa	50%
2011	Hurricane Irene causes significant damage in this famous Massachusetts seashore	Cape Cod	50%
1994	The first US-Mexico transboundary conservation area is created following the establishment of Canon de Santa Elena national park in this Mexican state, across the border from Big Bend	Chihuahua	50%
1938	This painter, famous for paintings of New Mexico landscapes and desert flowers, visits Yosemite National Park	Georgia O'Keefe	50%
2009	This famous historical documentarian, perhaps best known for his 9-part miniseries on the Civil War, releases a new series: National Parks, America's Best Idea	Ken Burns	50%
1943	This all-black squadron of military pilots, who would later be honored with a National Historic site in Georgia, deploys to North Africa	Tuskeegee Airmen	50%
1941	This legendary National Park photographer and Sierra Club member is contracted by the NPS for the first time	Ansel Adams	46%
1932	Work begins on this project, the first major National Parkway and the most-visited unit in the NPS system	Blue Ridge Parkway	46%
1958	Warren Harding and his team make the first ascent of "the nose", a climbing route on this Yosemite monolith	El Capitan	46%
1991	Montana's Custer Battlefield National Monument is renamed to this as part of a plan to recognize & honor native combatants	Little Bighorn Battlefield	46%
1999	This tribe launches an ambitious effort to preserve the aquatic ecosystems in the Everglades and Big Cypress National Preserve	Seminole	46%
2003	Aron Ralston narrowly escapes a slot canyon in Canyonlands National Park, after foolishly endangering himself by hiking alone without telling anyone his itinerary. His 5-day ordeal would later be made into this hit movie	127 hours	42%
1951	The modern NPS logo, shaped like this object, is authorized as the official NPS emblem	Arrowhead	42%
1975	A National Historical Park in this city celebrates the bicentennial of the Battle of Bunker Hill	Boston	42%
1997	"Old Grey Guy", a large wolf, crosses 15 miles of ice to this national park	Isle Royale	42%
1947		Marjory Stoneman Douglass famously describes the Everglades as a "River of {Grass}" in a book which started the effort to preserve the area	42%
2006	This band releases Dani California, a song about a girl who dies in Badlands National Park	Red Hot Chili Peppers	42%
1936	An international peace memorial is established in northern Ohio to celebrate the victory of this American commodore in one of the most important naval battles in the War of 1812	Commodore Perry	38%
1996	This national monument, whose size would later be slashed in half by President Trump, is established	Grand Staircase-Escalante	38%
1956	128 people die in this type of tragedy over Grand Canyon National Park, making this event the single most common cause of death in the park	Plane Crash	38%
1978	This trail, the longest north-south National Scenic Trail, is established	Continental Divide Trail	29%
1963	This new reservoir behind the Glen Canyon dam is named for a legendary explorer of the Colorado River	Lake Powell	29%
1953	Bernard DeVoto publishes a widely-read article suggesting that this drastic action be taken by the NPS in order to highlight the level of underfunding and disrepair in the parks as Congress continued to pilfer funds for other purposes	Close the National Parks	21%
1990	This volcano in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, widely considered to be the most active on earth, buries the town of Kalapana and kills over 100 with a lava flow	Kilauea	17%
1917	This man is appointed to be the first director of the NPS	Stephen Mather	17%
1970	Ths home of this Polish-American revolutionary, who is also the namesake of the highest mountain in Australia, is added to the National Register of Historic Places	Tadeusz Kościuszko	17%
1930	Sunset Crater Volcano, the largest volcano of this unique type, is protected in Arizona	Cinder Cone	13%
2001	Roxanne Quimby uses her fortune to begin purchasing land around the highest mountain in Maine for the creation of this national monument	{Katahdin} Woods and Waters	13%
1942	This "mountain warfare" division of the army, which would be instrumental in driving Nazis from the Italian alps, trains during the winter on snowy Mount Rainier	10th Mountain Division	8%
1922	This man, an escaped slave who was the third african american graduate of West Point and the first black superintendent of a National Park, dies on a mission in Nigeria	Charles Young	4%
1957	This famous author of "The Monkey Wrench Gang" leaves his job as a park ranger in Arches National Park	Edward Abbey	0%