50 Fun Facts About US State Capitals Trivia for Kids

What is the capital of Georgia?

Atlanta owes its start to a railroad: it was founded in 1837 at the spot where a new line was to end, and its first name was simply Terminus.

What is the capital of Colorado?

Denver was started by gold prospectors in 1858 and named after the governor of Kansas Territory, because the land was part of Kansas at the time.

What is the capital of Texas?

Austin's townspeople once fought to keep it the capital: when the government moved away in 1842 they refused to let the state's records leave, and three years later the government came back.

What is the capital of Tennessee?

Nashville is nicknamed Music City: the Grand Ole Opry, a radio show of country music, began there in 1925 and is still on the air.

Which state capital gives a famous 500-mile race its name?

Indianapolis, the capital of Indiana, lent its name to the Indianapolis 500, first run in 1911 on a track built two years earlier so the city's carmakers could test their cars.

What is the capital of Utah?

Salt Lake City was founded in 1847 by Brigham Young and his Mormon followers, who had travelled west looking for a place to practise their religion in peace.

What is the capital of Alabama?

Montgomery was the first capital of the Confederacy in 1861. Almost a century later Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat there, setting off the famous Montgomery bus boycott.

What is the capital of Arkansas?

Little Rock became the capital in 1821, taking over from Arkansas Post, the river settlement where the territory's government had first set up two years earlier.

What is the capital of Iowa?

Des Moines took over as Iowa's capital from Iowa City in 1857, the same year the growing town dropped the word 'Fort' from the front of its name.

What is the capital of Illinois?

Springfield won the job thanks to nine unusually tall state lawmakers nicknamed the Long Nine, who pushed through the vote to move the capital there in the 1830s.

What is the capital of Mississippi?

Jackson was burned so badly by Union soldiers in 1863 that it earned the nickname Chimneyville, because chimneys were almost all that was left standing.

What is the capital of Michigan?

Lansing was little more than forest when lawmakers made it the capital in 1847, moving out of Detroit. At first the new town was simply called Michigan.

Which state capital was settled in one day in 1889?

Oklahoma City had about 10,000 settlers by nightfall on April 22, 1889, the day the government opened the land and homesteaders rushed in to stake their claims.

What is the capital of Oregon?

Salem once lost the job: the capital was moved to the town of Corvallis, but only briefly, and it soon came back to Salem for good.

What is the capital of Rhode Island?

Providence was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, who had been forced out of Massachusetts for his religious views and wanted a place where people could worship as they chose.

What is the capital of Washington?

Olympia got the job in 1853, when the first governor of the new Washington Territory named the little port his capital. No other city has held it since, not even Seattle.

What is the capital of West Virginia?

Charleston had to win the job: for years West Virginia's capital moved back and forth between it and the city of Wheeling, until voters settled the matter in 1877.

What is the capital of Wyoming?

Cheyenne sprang up in 1867 as the Union Pacific Railroad reached the spot, and every July it still celebrates its Wild West past with Frontier Days, one of the biggest rodeos in America.

What is the capital of Idaho?

Boise comes from the French for 'wooded'. French-speaking fur trappers are said to have given the name to its tree-lined river, a welcome sight in dry country, and the city borrowed it.

What is the capital of Pennsylvania?

Harrisburg began as Harris's Ferry, a trading post and river crossing set up on the Susquehanna by an English trader named John Harris, and it became the capital in 1812.

What is the capital of Virginia?

Richmond took over from Williamsburg in the middle of the Revolutionary War, and within two years British raiders led by Benedict Arnold had attacked and looted the new capital.

What is the capital of North Dakota?

Bismarck was renamed in 1873 after Germany's leader, Otto von Bismarck, in the hope that Germans would put money into the railroad being built through the town.

What is the capital of South Dakota?

Pierre is pronounced 'peer', not the French way, even though it was named after a fur trader of French descent, Pierre Chouteau.

What is the capital of Missouri?

Jefferson City was built to be the capital, on a site picked in 1821 near the middle of the new state, and the town was laid out by a son of the frontiersman Daniel Boone.

What is the capital of Kentucky?

Frankfort lies between Louisville and Lexington, two bigger rivals that each tried to take the capital for themselves and failed.

What is the capital of Connecticut?

Hartford used to share the job: for generations Connecticut had two capitals, Hartford and New Haven, and lawmakers moved between them until Hartford became the only one in 1875.

What is the capital of Maryland?

Annapolis is where George Washington gave up command of the army in 1783, handing back his power in the State House once the Revolutionary War was won.

What is the capital of Delaware?

Dover was planned on the orders of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, who was also in charge of the land that became Delaware.

What is the capital of New Hampshire?

Concord means agreement, and the town was given the name in 1765 to mark the peaceful end of a long and bitter quarrel over its boundaries.

What is the capital of Maine?

Augusta began in 1628 as a trading post of the Pilgrims' Plymouth Colony, whose traders came up the Kennebec River to deal in furs.

Which state has Phoenix, the most populous state capital in the United States, as its capital?

Arizona's capital was built in the 1860s on the ruins of canals dug centuries earlier by the Hohokam people, which is why its founders named it after the phoenix, the bird that rises again.

Which state capital has the fewest people of any in the United States?

Montpelier has only about 8,000 residents, but it sits near the middle of Vermont, which is why lawmakers looking for a permanent home chose it in 1805.

Which state capital is highest above sea level?

Santa Fe sits about 7,000 feet up, well over a mile high, because Spanish settlers built it around 1610 at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

Which state capital is on an island in the Pacific Ocean?

Honolulu means 'calm harbor' in Hawaiian, and the harbor made it: whaling and trading ships crowded in during the 1800s, and the king of Hawaii made it his capital.

Which state capital was renamed to honour the president who led the Union through the Civil War?

Lincoln got its name from a trick that failed. A lawmaker who wanted to stop the capital moving there proposed naming it after Abraham Lincoln, hoping the president's old opponents would vote no, but they voted yes.

Which state capital is named after the fourth president, known as the Father of the Constitution?

Madison was chosen as the capital in 1836 before a single house stood there: it existed only as a plan on paper, named for James Madison, who had died that summer.

Which state capital is named after the explorer who claimed the Americas for Spain in 1492?

Columbus was created in 1812 specially to be Ohio's capital, on a site chosen because it was near the middle of the state. The government moved in four years later.

Which state capital is named after the English explorer behind the lost Roanoke Colony?

Raleigh honours Sir Walter Raleigh, who sent the Roanoke settlers across the Atlantic in the 1580s but never set foot in North America himself.

Which state capital is named after a famous mountain man and frontier scout of the 1800s?

Carson City takes its name from Kit Carson by way of the Carson River, which an explorer named after his scout. The town boomed after 1859, when silver was struck nearby in the Comstock Lode.

Which state capital's name means 'Red Stick' in French?

Baton Rouge is French for 'red stick'. French explorers in 1699 saw a red pole on the riverbank there, thought to have marked the boundary between the lands of two Native American peoples.

Which state capital took over from Sitka as Alaska's capital in 1906?

Juneau began as a gold-mining camp and was named after the prospector Joe Juneau. No road links it to the rest of Alaska, so everyone arrives by boat or plane.

Which state capital was founded in 1630 by English Puritan settlers on the Shawmut Peninsula?

Boston was named after the town of Boston in eastern England, the old home of many of the Puritans who settled it.

Which state capital is next door to Minneapolis, forming the 'Twin Cities'?

Saint Paul grew up at the last good landing place for steamboats heading up the Mississippi River, and in its first rough years the settlement was known as Pig's Eye.

Which Montana city, now the state capital, began as a gold camp at Last Chance Gulch in 1864?

Helena's main street still follows Last Chance Gulch, the creek bed where prospectors struck gold in 1864 and a mining camp grew up around the find.

George Washington crossed the Delaware River on Christmas night in 1776 to surprise enemy soldiers in which state capital?

Trenton was held by Hessians, German soldiers hired by the British, and Washington's morning attack caught them off guard. Eight years later the town spent a few weeks as capital of the whole United States.

Which state capital is famous for the school segregation case Brown vs. Board of Education?

Topeka's school board was taken to court by Oliver Brown and twelve other Black families over its separate schools, and in 1954 the Supreme Court ruled that such schools could never be equal.

Which state capital is home to Florida State University?

Tallahassee was picked as Florida's capital in 1824 because it lay about halfway between the territory's two main towns, Pensacola and St. Augustine, which had been taking turns.

Which state capital sits where the American River joins a larger river in California?

Sacramento boomed after gold was found at a sawmill up the American River in 1848: fortune hunters poured through, and the town was laid out that same year on John Sutter's land.

Which city, first settled by the Dutch as Fort Orange, is the capital of New York?

Albany got its present name in 1664, when the English took over the Dutch colony and renamed the fur-trading post in honour of the Duke of York and Albany, the future King James II.

Which river's valley, the goal of Oregon Trail pioneers, holds Oregon's capital?

Willamette is the river: its valley's rich farmland is why so many wagon trains on the Oregon Trail were heading there.