Americana Trivia
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99 free Americana trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
64 free Americana trivia questions with answers. Americana is the stuff of road trips and small-town nostalgia: neon diners, drive-in movies, a Wurlitzer in the corner, a Coke for a nickel and a Model T in the driveway. This quiz rounds up the icons that make up that picture, from Route 66 and Burma-Shave signs to Rosie the Riveter, Smokey Bear, Cracker Jack prizes and the Cadillacs buried nose-first outside Amarillo. The easy questions ask what the national bird is and who painted American Gothic. The harder ones want the town where the word 'motel' was coined, the year the Liberty Bell was ordered, why the Marlboro Man was invented and which state never got Burma-Shave signs. It suits a Fourth of July party, a classroom unit on US culture or anyone who has ever pulled over for the World's Only Corn Palace. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the object, brand or landmark in question, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
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Q 01Route 66 ran from Chicago to which West Coast city?
Santa Monica
Santa Monica: the highway reached the Pacific at Santa Monica after a 1936 extension from downtown Los Angeles, having crossed eight states over about 2,448 miles.
Q 02Which novel popularised Route 66's nickname 'the Mother Road'?
The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath (1939): Steinbeck gave Route 66 the name as his Joads join the Dust Bowl migrants heading west on it to California, and the nickname outlived the highway itself.
Q 03Which animated film centres on a small town bypassed by the interstate that replaced Route 66?
Cars
Cars (2006): Radiator Springs, the town Lightning McQueen is stranded in, was modelled on real Route 66 towns left fading after Interstate 40 bypassed them.
Q 04Which president signed the act creating the interstates that eventually replaced Route 66?
Dwight Eisenhower
Dwight Eisenhower had seen Germany's autobahns as a wartime general and wanted such roads at home; his 1956 act funded the interstates that bypassed Route 66, the last stretch in Arizona in 1984.
Q 05The 1960s TV series Route 66 followed two young men travelling the country in which car?
Chevrolet Corvette
A Chevrolet Corvette convertible carried Tod Stiles and his travelling partner, first Buz Murdock and later Linc Case; Chevrolet supplied the vehicles, upgrading to the new model each season.
Q 06The word 'motel' was coined for a 1925 lodging in which California town?
San Luis Obispo
San Luis Obispo: architect Arthur Heineman is said to have cut 'Milestone Motor Hotel' down to 'Mo-Tel' because the full name would not fit on the roof sign; it opened in December 1925.
Q 07The Holiday Inn chain was named, as a joke, after a 1942 musical film starring which singer?
Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby starred in Holiday Inn with Fred Astaire; a decade later the man drawing up Kemmons Wilson's first Memphis motel put the film's title on the plans, and it stuck.
Q 08The first patented drive-in theater opened in 1933 in which state?
New Jersey
New Jersey: Richard Hollingshead tested the idea at home with a projector on his car's hood and a screen nailed to trees, then opened his Park-In Theater near Camden in June 1933.
Q 09Where were the earliest coin-operated phonographs, the ancestors of the jukebox, first installed in 1889?
A San Francisco saloon
A San Francisco saloon: Louis Glass installed a coin-operated Edison phonograph at the Palais Royale on 23 November 1889; patrons listened through listening tubes.
Q 10The 'juke' in jukebox probably comes from which language's word for wicked?
Gullah
Gullah, the Creole of the Georgia and Carolina coast, has 'juke' or 'joog' for wicked or disorderly; the word probably named rowdy roadside juke joints first, and the machines that played in them took it.
Q 11The 1946 Wurlitzer Model 1015 jukebox is better known by what nickname?
The Bubbler
The Bubbler, named for the bubble tubes in its illuminated arches; Paul Fuller's design sold more than 56,000 units and offered 24 selections.
Q 12The first crude 'diner' of 1872 was a horse-drawn wagon serving workers at which city's Journal newspaper?
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence, Rhode Island: Walter Scott cut windows into a covered wagon and sold sandwiches and coffee to Providence Journal pressmen working the night shift.
Q 13Which painter's canvas Nighthawks shows late-night customers at a diner counter?
Edward Hopper
Q 21Henry Ford said the idea for his moving assembly line came from which Chicago industry?
Meatpacking
Meatpacking: Ford credited the overhead trolleys on which Chicago packers took carcasses apart; run in reverse for the Model T, the idea cut assembly from over twelve hours to 93 minutes.
Q 22Which car surpassed the Model T's sales record in 1972?
Volkswagen Beetle
The Volkswagen Beetle, ordered by Hitler as a 'people's car', reached full production only after the war, when the British Army restarted the bombed factory; car number 15,007,034 passed the Model T on 17 February 1972.
Q 23The Ford Mustang was introduced in April 1964 at which event?
The New York World's Fair
Edward Hopper's Nighthawks shows three customers and a counterman in a diner with no visible door; Hopper said that, 'unconsciously, probably', he was painting the loneliness of a large city.
Q 14Coca-Cola was first sold in 1886 at a pharmacy in which city?
Atlanta
Atlanta: it went on sale at Jacobs' Pharmacy on 8 May 1886 at five cents a glass, a price that held until 1959, partly because Coke's vending machines took only nickels.
Q 15John Pemberton based his famous 1886 soft drink on which of his earlier products?
A French coca wine
A French coca wine: Pemberton's French Wine Coca lost its alcohol when local prohibition laws banned wine in 1886, and the reworked syrup, mixed with soda water, became Coca-Cola.
Q 16Coca-Cola's 1915 bottle brief wanted it recognisable in the dark, or even when what?
Broken
Broken on the ground: the brief wanted a bottle known by touch or from its pieces, and the Root Glass Company of Terre Haute won with a ribbed shape copied from a library picture of a cocoa pod.
Q 17Tailor Jacob Davis first riveted work trousers in which city, later nicknamed 'The Biggest Little City in the World'?
Reno, Nevada
Reno, Nevada: Jacob Davis ran a tailor's shop there and wrote to his cloth supplier, Levi Strauss, in 1872, offering to share the patent because he could not afford the fee alone.
Q 18What did Levi's copper rivets originally reinforce?
Pocket corners
Pocket corners: Davis hammered copper rivets into the corners of the pockets and the base of the fly, the stress points where work trousers kept tearing.
Q 19What lot number was assigned in 1890 to Levi's famous copper-riveted waist overalls?
501
501: Levi Strauss & Co. gave its riveted waist overalls the lot number 501 in 1890, the year the rivet patent expired and competitors could copy it.
Q 20What was the Ford Model T's popular nickname?
Tin Lizzie
Tin Lizzie: nobody is sure where the Model T's nickname came from; Ford dropped his other models to build this one car and sold about 15 million between 1908 and 1927.
The New York World's Fair: Ford unveiled the Mustang there on 17 April 1964, selling more than 400,000 in the first year and naming the 'pony car' class.
Q 24Grant Wood's American Gothic depicts a farmer and his daughter in front of a house in which state?
Iowa
Iowa: Wood spotted the little farmhouse in Eldon, Iowa, in 1930; its pointed upstairs window is in a style called Carpenter Gothic, which gave the painting its name.
Q 25Who modelled for the man in American Gothic?
The Wood family dentist
The Wood family dentist: Byron McKeeby of Cedar Rapids posed for the farmer, while Wood's sister Nan, in a colonial-print apron, was the woman.
Q 26Norman Rockwell painted covers for which magazine for nearly five decades?
The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post ran more than 300 Rockwell covers across 47 years, the last in 1963; his later civil-rights paintings appeared in Look instead.
Q 27Rockwell's The Problem We All Live With shows which six-year-old walking to school past federal marshals?
Ruby Bridges
Ruby Bridges entered William Frantz Elementary in New Orleans in November 1960; she was the only pupil in her class all year, taught alone by Barbara Henry, a teacher from Boston.
Q 28The 'We Can Do It!' poster later associated with Rosie the Riveter was originally made for which company?
Westinghouse
Westinghouse displayed it only in its own factories in February 1943; the poster was then forgotten until it resurfaced in the 1980s and spread to T-shirts and mugs.
Q 29James Montgomery Flagg based the stern Uncle Sam of his 1917 'I Want You' poster on whose face?
His own
His own: Flagg posed for Uncle Sam himself rather than hire a model, and the picture first ran as a 1916 Leslie's Weekly cover before the Army borrowed it.
Q 30Before Uncle Sam, which male figure personified the American populace?
Brother Jonathan
Brother Jonathan, a sharp-witted rustic of plays and cartoons, stood for the American people before Uncle Sam, whose look was drawn from his.