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This Arizona trivia quiz has 70 free questions with answers and covers the whole state: how it got its name and its Valentine's Day statehood, the territorial capitals before Phoenix, the Gadsden Purchase, Geronimo and the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and the natural landmarks everyone has seen in photos, from the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley to Antelope Canyon, Havasu Falls and Meteor Crater. There are questions on the state symbols (the bird, the tree, the neckwear and the surprisingly recent state planet), on why most of Arizona never changes its clocks, on the London Bridge that ended up in Lake Havasu City, and on sports, from the Diamondbacks' 2001 World Series to spring training and the Coyotes' departure. Famous Arizonans such as Barry Goldwater, Sandra Day O'Connor, John McCain and Cesar Chavez appear too. It works for a family road trip, a classroom, or a trivia night. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia or a primary source, and each question links to the page that confirms it.
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Q 01Arizona became the 48th state on February 14, 1912. Which holiday does that date fall on?
Valentine's Day
Arizona was the last of the contiguous 48 states to join the Union; only Alaska and Hawaii came later.
Q 02The state's name is thought to come from an O'odham phrase, alĭ ṣonak, meaning what?
Small spring
The phrase passed into Spanish as Arizonac before being shortened to the name used today.
Q 03How much did the US pay Mexico for the 1853 Gadsden Purchase?
$10 million
The land south of the Gila River was wanted for a southern transcontinental railroad route.
Q 04Which government formally organized an Arizona Territory first, on January 18, 1862?
The Confederate States
The Union created its own Arizona Territory the following year, splitting it off from New Mexico Territory.
Q 05Which town, home of Whiskey Row and the World's Oldest Rodeo, was Arizona's first territorial capital?
Prescott
The town was named after historian William H. Prescott, and its rodeo has run continuously since 1888.
Q 06In what year did Phoenix become the territorial capital of Arizona?
1889
The capital had bounced back and forth between two other towns for a quarter of a century before settling in Phoenix.
Q 07Phoenix was named for a city rising from the ruins of which ancient canal-building culture?
Hohokam
Their canals ran for roughly 135 miles, and modern Phoenix canals still follow some of the same routes.
Q 08What all-time record high temperature did Phoenix reach on June 26, 1990?
122 °F
Sky Harbor Airport briefly halted flights that day because aircraft performance charts did not go that high.
Q 09What is the nickname of the Phoenix metropolitan area?
Valley of the Sun
The name comes from its setting in the Salt River Valley, and Phoenix is now the most populous state capital in the country.
Q 10Which Arizona city was the first in the United States to be named a UNESCO City of Gastronomy, in 2015?
Tucson
Nicknamed the Old Pueblo, it is also the oldest incorporated city in the state, dating to 1877.
Q 11How long is the Grand Canyon?
277 miles
It reaches up to 18 miles wide and more than a mile deep.
Q 12Which president signed the 1919 act that made the Grand Canyon a national park?
Woodrow Wilson
Roosevelt had visited in 1903 and set up a game preserve there, but the park itself came 16 years later.
Q 13Who was the first European known to have seen the Grand Canyon, in 1540?
García López de Cárdenas
He was scouting for the Coronado expedition, which was searching for the fabled Seven Cities of Gold.
Q 21NASA astronauts trained for the Apollo Moon missions in which northern Arizona landmark?
Meteor Crater
The 50,000-year-old hole is nearly a mile across and remains privately owned by the Barringer family.
Q 22Which Arizona park protects fossilized logs from the Late Triassic?
Petrified Forest
Theodore Roosevelt made it the country's second national monument in 1906; it was upgraded to a national park in 1962.
Q 23John Ford shot Stagecoach, Fort Apache and The Searchers among the buttes of which Arizona landscape?
Monument Valley
Its Navajo name means 'valley of the rocks', and its tallest buttes rise 1,000 feet above the floor.
Q 14What is the highest point in Arizona, at 12,633 feet?
Humphreys Peak
It is part of the San Francisco Peaks, the remains of an extinct volcano in the north of the state.
Q 15Most of Arizona does not observe daylight saving time. Which territory within the state does?
Navajo Nation
The reservation spans three states, so it keeps clocks in step with its Utah and New Mexico portions.
Q 16From March to November, most of Arizona shares its clock time with which neighboring state?
California
In winter Arizona is an hour ahead of the Pacific coast; in summer the difference vanishes.
Q 17Old Oraibi, one of the oldest continuously inhabited US villages, belongs to which people?
Hopi
Their villages sit atop three mesas in northern Arizona, and their reservation is entirely surrounded by a much larger one.
Q 18Arizona meets three other states at the Four Corners. Which of these is NOT one of them?
Nevada
It is the only spot in the U.S. shared by four states, and the monument marking it also sits on the boundary between two tribal reservations.
Q 19Hoover Dam, on Arizona's western border, holds back which reservoir?
Lake Mead
The dam was known officially as Boulder Dam for much of the 1930s and 1940s before its original name was restored.
Q 20The 1831 London Bridge, bought in 1968, was rebuilt across a channel of which Arizona reservoir?
Lake Havasu
Developer Robert P. McCulloch paid about roughly $2.5M for it as a lure for tourists and retirees, and rededicated it in 1971.
Q 24Which sandstone gorge near Page, with sections called The Crack and The Corkscrew, requires guided tours?
Antelope Canyon
Its swirling walls were carved by flash floods, which is also why unaccompanied visits are banned during monsoon season.
Q 25The vivid blue-green water at Havasu Falls comes from a high concentration of what?
Calcium carbonate
The same mineral builds the natural travertine dams that form the pools below the falls on the Havasupai reservation.
Q 26Lowell Observatory, where Clyde Tombaugh made his famous 1930 discovery, is in which Arizona city?
Flagstaff
The city sits at about 7,000 feet inside the largest contiguous ponderosa pine forest in North America, and in 2001 became the world's first International Dark-Sky City.
Q 27In 2024 Arizona adopted an official state planet. Which one?
Pluto
It was discovered from Arizona in 1930, which is the state's claim on it despite its demotion to dwarf planet in 2006.
Q 28Which Arizona city refused McDonald's its yellow arches in 1993?
Sedona
The town, named for a postmaster's wife, guards the look of its red-rock setting closely.
Q 29Which Route 66 town has a Standin' on the Corner Park thanks to the Eagles' Take It Easy?
Winslow
The song was written by Jackson Browne and Glenn Frey, and the park added a second statue honoring Frey in 2016.
Q 30Which Arizona mining town, founded by Ed Schieffelin in 1879, is 'The Town Too Tough to Die'?
Tombstone
Schieffelin had been warned that the only rock he would find in Apache country would be his own gravestone; he found silver instead.