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49 free Alcatraz trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
45 free Alcatraz trivia questions with answers. Alcatraz held some of America's most notorious criminals for 29 years, and its legend has only grown since. This quiz covers the whole story in forty-five questions: the Spanish name, the Civil War fort, the 1934 conversion to an 'escape-proof' federal prison, Al Capone's banjo, the Birdman who never kept birds there, the 1946 Battle of Alcatraz, the papier-mâché heads of the 1962 escape, the Native American occupation of 1969 and today's 1.4 million annual visitors. Easy questions ask which city it faces and which Clint Eastwood film retold the escape; hard ones want the first warden's name, the number of escape attempts, the size of a cell and the two men who vanished in 1937. Made for history buffs, true-crime fans and anyone planning a trip to Pier 33. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the island, the penitentiary, the escapes and the inmates, and each question shows the sentence that backs it up.
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Q 01Alcatraz Island sits in the bay of which US city?
San Francisco
Alcatraz sits in San Francisco Bay, east of the Golden Gate; the bay's cold water and strong currents made swimming to the city nearly impossible.
Q 02What is the prison's famous nickname?
The Rock
The name comes from Spanish alcatraz, meaning gannet, though it is popularly taken to mean pelican.
Q 03What does the Spanish word 'alcatraz' mean in the island's name?
Gannet or pelican
Alcatraz comes from Spanish alcatraces, 'pelicans' or gannets; Juan Manuel de Ayala's 1775 survey named an 'Isla de los Alcatraces', first applied to what is now Yerba Buena Island.
Q 04In which year did Alcatraz open as a federal penitentiary?
1934
Alcatraz opened as a federal penitentiary in 1934; the Justice Department had taken the Army's disciplinary barracks in October 1933, and the first federal convicts arrived that August.
Q 05In which year did the federal prison close?
1963
The federal penitentiary closed on 21 March 1963 under Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, after structural decay and running costs far above other federal prisons made it uneconomic.
Q 06How far is Alcatraz from the shore of the city it faces?
About 1.25 miles
Alcatraz lies about 1.25 miles (2 km) from San Francisco's shoreline; the bay's cold water and strong currents, not the distance, made escape so deadly.
Q 07Which Chicago gangster was among Alcatraz's most famous inmates and played banjo in its prison band?
Al Capone
The band was called the Rock Islanders and played Sunday concerts; Capone's syphilis was steadily eroding his mind by then.
Q 08Robert Stroud, the 'Birdman of Alcatraz', actually kept his birds at which other prison?
Leavenworth
Stroud bred and studied canaries at Leavenworth, Kansas, for decades; Alcatraz banned the birds, and he spent his 17 years on the island mostly in segregation and the hospital wing.
Q 09Which actor played Robert Stroud in the 1962 film Birdman of Alcatraz?
Burt Lancaster
Burt Lancaster played Stroud in John Frankenheimer's Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) and received a Best Actor Oscar nomination for the role.
Q 10Which gangster served more time at Alcatraz than any other inmate?
Alvin Karpis
Karpis was there from 1936 to 1962, and was the only FBI 'Public Enemy #1' ever taken alive.
Q 11What nickname did fellow Alcatraz inmates give gangster George Barnes for his tall fish stories?
Pop Gun Kelly
Fellow inmates dubbed Machine Gun Kelly 'Pop Gun Kelly' for his boastful tales; he had collected a $200,000 ransom for kidnapping oilman Charles Urschel in 1933 and died in Leavenworth in 1954.
Q 12How many escape attempts were made during Alcatraz's 29 years as a federal prison?
14
There were 14 escape attempts involving 36 men; 23 were caught, six were shot dead, two drowned and five were never found.
Q 13The three men in the famous June 1962 Alcatraz escape were Frank Morris and two brothers from which family?
The Anglins
Q 21Which armed force helped guards retake the cellhouse in the 1946 'Battle of Alcatraz'?
The US Marines
A detachment of US Marines joined guards to end the 2-4 May 1946 siege, dropping grenades through holes cut in the roof; three inmates died and two more were later executed at San Quentin.
Q 22What was the main corridor of the Alcatraz cellhouse, named after a famous street, called?
Broadway
The main corridor between B and C blocks was Broadway; others were Michigan Avenue, Park Avenue and, in D-Block, Sunset Strip, with Times Square at Broadway's end.
Q 23What were the six isolation cells at the end of D-Block known as?
The Hole
John and Clarence Anglin, bank robbers from Georgia, remain on the US Marshals' wanted list.
Q 14In the famous 1962 Alcatraz escape, what did the fugitives leave in their beds to fool guards making night counts?
Papier-mâché heads with real hair
Papier-mâché heads with real hair fooled the guards until one fell on the floor at 7 a.m.; the hair had been stolen from the prison barbershop.
Q 15What did the 1962 escapees build their raft from?
Over 50 stolen raincoats
They assembled it on top of the cell block behind sheets, then left through a roof vent.
Q 16What did the escapees use to power a homemade drill for widening their cell vents?
A vacuum cleaner motor
The drill was made from a broken vacuum cleaner motor; Morris's accordion during music hour covered the noise, and a spoon soldered with silver from a dime served as a chisel.
Q 17Which fourth conspirator was left behind in 1962 because his fake wall had set in cement?
Allen West
Allen West had cemented his own false grille too firmly and broke through only after the others had gone; he told the FBI the plan was to paddle to Angel Island.
Q 18What did the FBI officially conclude in 1979 about the fate of the 1962 escapees?
They likely drowned in the bay
The Marshals Service still lists them as wanted until September 2026, and theories about their survival keep surfacing.
Q 19Who played escape ringleader Frank Morris in the 1979 film Escape from Alcatraz, directed by Don Siegel?
Clint Eastwood
Escape from Alcatraz was the fifth and last film Clint Eastwood made with Don Siegel, the director who had given him Dirty Harry.
Q 20What was Al Capone's inmate number at Alcatraz?
AZ-85
Capone was Alcatraz inmate AZ-85 from his arrival in August 1934; Machine Gun Kelly was AZ-117 and Frank Morris AZ-1441.
D-Block's six dark solitary cells were 'the Hole'; inmates could be stripped and locked in darkness there for up to 19 days at a stretch.
Q 24Roughly how big was a standard Alcatraz cell?
9 by 5 feet
Standard cells measured about 9 by 5 feet and 7 feet high; the cellblocks were built so that no cell touched an outside wall.
Q 25How many prisoners in total passed through Alcatraz as a federal penitentiary?
1,576
About 1,576 men were held over the prison's 29 years (some tallies say 1,557); the population averaged around 260 and never topped about 300.
Q 26From which federal penitentiary was Al Capone transferred to Alcatraz in August 1934?
Atlanta
Capone arrived on 22 August 1934 in a group transferred from the Atlanta federal penitentiary, where he had been serving his 11-year tax-evasion sentence since 1932.
Q 27Which surprising fact was true of the food at Alcatraz?
Many inmates said it was better than at other prisons
Some inmates even volunteered to transfer to the Rock, despite its 'Hellcatraz' reputation.
Q 28Roughly how many books did the average Alcatraz prisoner read per year?
75 to 100
The average inmate read 75 to 100 books a year; every prisoner got a library card on arrival, newspapers were banned, and crime stories were cut out of magazines.
Q 29Why did huge quantities of drinking water have to be barged to Alcatraz every week?
The island has no natural spring
Nearly a million gallons a week were barged in, one reason the prison cost about $10 per inmate per day versus $3 in Atlanta.
Q 30Who was the first warden of Alcatraz?
James A. Johnston
James A. Johnston, warden from 1934 to 1948, was the first of Alcatraz's four wardens; he set the strict regime and lived in the 15-room warden's house beside the lighthouse.