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National Park Quiz 2: Straddlers

Arizona-Nevada state line marker. Photo by allhype via flickr.

Folks had fun with the little quiz we published last week, so we’ve decided to publish a national park system quiz every week. Most will be themed. The first one was about centers, and several people reported excellent scores. Let's see how you do with this one about straddlers. Straddlers is what we're calling parks that straddle state lines, rivers, mountain ranges, or anything else a park can straddle. We've thrown in a bonus question for extra credit. Answers are at the end. Don’t peek.

1. Gateway National Recreation Area is so-named because it straddles the entrance to New York’s harbor. Which park component is on the New Jersey side?
a. Fort Hancock
b. Jacob Riis Park
c. Great Kills Park
d. Floyd Bennett Field

2. Which of the following national parks straddles the Continental Divide?
a. Great Sand Dunes National Park
b. Glacier National Park
c. Redwood National and State Parks
d. Katmai National Park and Preserve

3. Yellowstone National Park straddles one state border on its northern side and another on its western side. Which of the following statements is true?
a. Three of the park’s five entrances are in Wyoming.
b. Idaho state game laws govern fishing throughout the park.
c. Most of the park’s federally designated wilderness is in Montana.
d. Yellowstone is not the only national park that is located in three different states.

4. Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park straddles the U.S.-Canadian border. Which of the following is in the American part of the peace park?
a. the north end of Waterton Lake
b. the Prince of Wales Hotel
c. the golf course located near Emerald Bay
d. the St. Mary Lake and Wild Goose Island photo op

5. Death Valley National Park straddles the California-Nevada border. Which of the following is on the Nevada side of the park?
a. Scotty’s Castle
b. Grapevine Peak
c. Zabriskie Point
d. Panamint City Ghost Town

6. Great Smoky Mountains National Park straddles the Tennessee-North Carolina border. All of the recreational activities listed below can be enjoyed by a person visiting this park. Which would involve crossing the Tennessee-North Carolina border?
a. backpacking 30 miles on the Appalachian Trail so you can say “been there, done that”
b. walking from the Clingmans Dome parking lot to the observation platform
c. taking a 33-mile sightseeing drive on the Newfound Gap Road
d. bicycling the entire length of the 11-mile Cades Cove Loop

7. All of the following parks straddle the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail EXCEPT:
a. Olympic National Park
b. Crater Lake National Park
c. Yosemite National Park
d. Lassen Volcanic National Park

8. Golden Gate National Recreation Area straddles the Golden Gate. If I lived in San Francisco, I would have to cross the Golden Gate Bridge if I wanted to visit
a. Fort Funston so I could spend the afternoon watching hang gliders
b. Hawk Hill so I could spend the afternoon watching for raptors
c. Fort Point National Historical Site so I could watch a living history demonstration
d. Sweeney Ridge where Gaspar de Portola became the first European to see San Francisco Bay.

9. In which of the following cultural/historical parks could a visitor straddle a state line while standing on a paved trail?
a. Cumberland Gap National Historical Park
b. Colonial National Historical Park
c. Christiansted National Historic Site
d. Martin Luther King, J. National Historic Site

10. Your obnoxious neighbor is on vacation. He calls you on his cell phone and says “Guess what? I’m standing in a national park. My left foot is in Mississippi, but my right foot isn’t. Do you know where my right foot is? You reply: “Sure. Since it’s not in your mouth, it’s got to be in _______.
a. Louisiana
b. Tennessee
c. Arkansas
d. Alabama

Extra credit

11. Artillerymen and naval gunners can use a straddle to quickly zero in on a distant target. When you have one round land behind the target and one round land in front of it, you know the correct range lies in between. Hence the time-honored saying: “one over, one under, fire for effect.” Which of the historic brick masonry harbor forts listed below was on the receiving end of artillery fire whose aim was adjusted this way?
a. Fort Point (at Golden Gate National Recreation Area)
b. Fort Raleigh (at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site)
c. Fort Pulaski (at Fort Pulaski National Monument)
d. Fort Jefferson (at Dry Tortugas National Park)

Answers: (1) a (2) b (3) d (4) d (5) b (6) c (7) a (8) b (9) a (10) d (11) c -- The Confederates surrendered Fort Pulaski after Union artillery breached its front wall. The other three forts were never targeted by enemy fire. Grading: 9 or 10 correct, rest on your laurels; 7 or 8 correct, pretty darn good; 6 correct, not too bad; 5 or fewer correct, nothing to brag about.

Comments

Hey Sabattis, you going to tell us the answer to your bonus question, or just make us all suffer?


Bob - I totally agree, I think that the National Park System would be a little easier to protect and defend if the System itself were properly definied in terms that people could understand.

I've never found an official explanation for why some National Scenic Trails are Units of the National Park System but others are not, nor are any National Historical Trails. I do have one theory, however, in that one characteristic shared by the Appalachian, Natchez Trace, and Potomac Heritage NST's, and I believe by none of the others, is that each of those three involve large amounts of Federal land. The Natchez Trace NST is located entirely within the borders of the Natchez Trace Parkway, 2/3rds of the Potomac Heritage NST is located within the borders of the George Washington Memorial Parkway and the C&O Canal NHP (only the Laurel Highlands segment is not on Federal land), and I believe that almost the entire corridor of the Appalachian NST that was not already protected as Federal or State land has been acquired by the National Park Service. So far as I know, the National Park Service has not acquired land for any the other Trails. Additionally, many of the other Trails have been assigned to the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, or Fish and Wildlife Service to be the lead administering agency. So that's my best guess, anyways, for that particular quirk of the National Park System....


One purpose if these little quizzies is to get you digging into the literature -- or cyberspace, if you prefer -- to find out more about the parks. The question Sabattis tossed out was a bit tough, though, so perhaps a clue is in order. Think Pacific Coast and Gulf Coast.


Bob, you want us to use websites, literature and maps to answer your quizzes? I thought one had to answer them straight out of ones head, and was a bit unhappy as I got only 7 out of the 11 this time after 9 of 10 at the last.


Well, MRC, I wouldn't want people to use the "open book" approach to get the answers the first time through the quiz. That would take the fun out of it. But I do think it'd be great if people who missed quiz items used various sources (including the Internet) to find out why particular answers were correct. Often, the best place to begin is with the relevant park's home page, which can be accessed through the National Park Guide alphabetical index at http://home.nps.gov/applications/parksearch/atoz.cfm. Everybody with a serious interest in the national parks should have that site bookmarked.


Sorry..... Good point - here's the answer to my "bonus" trivia question. The first Park is Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, which has two Units, one in Seattle and one in Skagway, Alaska. The Klondike Gold Rush played a major role in the development of Seattle as a major city, so the Seattle Units makes for a very interesting addition to this Park. The second Park is Gulf Islands National Seashore - which includes beautiful white sand beaches in western Florida and in southern Mississippi, but doesn't include any sites in Alabama.


Sabattis, I think maybe you sorta painted yourself into a corner on this one, revealing the terribly complicated nature of devising completely unambiguous quiz questions. Here is how you phrased your question:

Two National Parks are located [in] two different States - even though those States do not share [a] border. Name the Parks!

No problem with the Gulf Islands National Seashore. That's one. But here's the rub with the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park. In tallying national parks (arriving at a total 0f 391), the Park Service counts the Skagway-based Klondike National Historical Park and the Klondike Gold Rush Seattle Unit National Historical Park as two separate units. That means that one can argue that they are really two separate national parks oriented to the same theme (the Klondike Gold Rush). If that were not true, why would each be listed separately in the master index, and why would each have its own website and its own Superintendent (Karen Beppler-Dorn in Seattle and Robyn Burch, Acting Superintendent as of August 2007 in Skagway)? OK, I will admit that it makes a lot of sense to consider them as just one park, but a good argument can be made for the alternate interpretation. Do you still consider your question completely fair?


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