Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free Arkansas trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Arkansas is the only state with a diamond mine open to the public, the only one whose legislature voted on how to say its own name, and the home of the world's largest company by revenue. This quiz has 50 Arkansas trivia questions with answers covering all of it: the Quapaw origins of the name, statehood in 1836, the Civil War capital that moved to Washington, the Little Rock Nine, the flag's 25 stars and diamond, and the official state everything from mockingbird to Dutch oven. You will also meet the people and places that put the state on the map: Bill Clinton's Hope, Johnny Cash's Kingsland, Sam Walton's five-and-dime in Bentonville, Hot Springs' gangster-era bathhouses, the Buffalo National River, Mount Magazine and the Razorbacks' porcine nickname. Questions run from easy ones any Arkansan can answer to a few that will test lifelong residents, with the difficulty marked on each. It works for a classroom, a bar quiz round or a family road trip through the Ozarks. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles for Arkansas and its landmarks, and each question shows its source, so you can settle any argument on the spot.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The name Arkansas comes from a French rendering of a word for which Native American people?
The Quapaw
The French spelled the Algonquian name for the Quapaw, akansa, as Arkansas; the Quapaw, a Dhegiha Siouan people, lived near the mouth of the Arkansas River when Europeans arrived.
Q 02How did the Arkansas legislature officially rule the state's name should be pronounced in 1881?
With the final "s" silent
The 1881 resolution fixed the pronunciation as Arkansaw, with the final "s" silent, calling the Ar-KAN-zas version an innovation to be discouraged; a 2007 resolution set the possessive as Arkansas's.
Q 03Arkansas joined the Union on June 15, 1836, as which number state?
25th
Arkansas became the 25th state on 15 June 1836, paired with free-state Michigan to keep the Senate balance; it was the 13th slave state, with about 60,000 residents.
Q 04Which Spanish explorer crossed the Mississippi into Arkansas in 1541?
Hernando de Soto
Hernando de Soto's expedition crossed the Mississippi in June 1541 and spent months in Arkansas; after he died of fever in May 1542, his men sank his body in the river to hide his mortality from the locals.
Q 05What was the first European settlement in the future state, founded by Henri de Tonti in 1686?
Arkansas Post
Arkansas Post, set up by Henri de Tonti in 1686 near the Arkansas River's mouth, was the Arkansas Territory's first capital until 1821 and saw the state's only Revolutionary War action, an April 1783 raid.
Q 06Which country sold Arkansas to the United States in 1803?
France
France sold the whole Louisiana Purchase territory, Arkansas included, to the United States in 1803 for about $15 million, three years after Spain had handed Louisiana back to Napoleon.
Q 07After Little Rock fell in 1863, Arkansas's Confederate government spent the rest of the war in which town?
Washington
Washington, in Hempstead County, served as the Confederate state capital from 1863 to 1865 after an earlier brief move to Hot Springs in 1862; the old town is preserved as Historic Washington State Park.
Q 08Which president ended the 1874 Brooks-Baxter War by ordering Brooks's militia dispersed?
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant's proclamation of 15 May 1874 recognised Elisha Baxter as governor and ordered Joseph Brooks's forces to disperse; the 1874 constitution that followed effectively ended Reconstruction in Arkansas.
Q 09Which Ozark resort town, famed for the 1886 Crescent Hotel, boomed on its healing springs?
Eureka Springs
Eureka Springs, founded in 1879 around springs believed to cure illness, briefly ranked among Arkansas's largest cities in the 1880s; the 1886 Crescent Hotel and the 1966 Christ of the Ozarks statue stand there.
Q 10The 1919 Elaine massacre began when whites attacked Black sharecroppers organizing what?
A farmers' union
The sharecroppers were organising a farmers' union, the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America, to win fair cotton payments; estimates of Black residents killed range from dozens to over 200, and Governor Charles Brough accompanied the troops.
Q 11Roughly how many Japanese Americans were held at Arkansas' Rohwer and Jerome camps?
About 16,000
About 16,000 Japanese Americans passed through the two camps; Rohwer in Desha County peaked at 8,475 people and operated until November 1945, while Jerome closed in June 1944.
Q 12Which governor used the National Guard to block nine Black students from Little Rock Central High in 1957?
Orval Faubus
Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to turn the students away on 4 September 1957; Eisenhower federalised the Guard and sent Army troops three weeks later to escort the Little Rock Nine in.
Q 13Which Army division did Eisenhower send to escort the Little Rock Nine into Central High in September 1957?
Q 21Which gangster kept a regular suite at Hot Springs' Arlington Hotel in the 1920s?
Al Capone
Al Capone was a regular at Hot Springs in the 1920s, staying in suite 443 of the Arlington Hotel and playing the Southern Club's tables; the town's illegal casinos ran openly until a 1967 crackdown.
Q 22Which Arkansas waterway became the first National River in the United States in 1972?
The Buffalo
The Buffalo River was designated the first national river on 1 March 1972, ending repeated Army Corps of Engineers plans to dam it; its 135 protected free-flowing miles run through the Ozarks.
Q 23Arkansas is the nation's largest producer of which grain?
Rice
The 101st Airborne
The 101st Airborne Division's troops escorted the Little Rock Nine into Central High on 25 September 1957 and stayed for weeks; Ernest Green became the school's first Black graduate in May 1958.
Q 14Which state does NOT border Arkansas?
Kansas
Six states touch it: Missouri, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma; the Mississippi River forms most of the eastern line.
Q 15Arkansas's highest point, at 2,753 feet, is which flat-topped mountain in the Ouachitas?
Mount Magazine
Mount Magazine's Signal Hill, at 2,753 feet, is the highest point in Arkansas; the flat-topped mountain's other summit is Mossback Ridge, and it sits within Mount Magazine State Park.
Q 16Which two mountain ranges make up the US Interior Highlands, between the Rockies and Appalachians?
The Ozarks and the Ouachitas
The Arkansas River divides the two ranges, with the Ozark Plateau to the north and the Ouachitas to the south.
Q 17Crowley's Ridge is the only place in Arkansas where which tree grows naturally?
The tulip tree
The tulip tree, or yellow poplar, grows naturally in Arkansas only on Crowley's Ridge, whose loess soils carry an Appalachian-style forest of beech and oak rather than the Delta's bottomland species.
Q 18Which 40-carat diamond turned up near Murfreesboro, Arkansas, in 1924?
Uncle Sam
The Uncle Sam, a 40.23-carat white diamond found at the Murfreesboro pipe in 1924, is the largest diamond ever unearthed in the United States; it was later cut to a 12.42-carat emerald-cut gem.
Q 19Who found Arkansas's first diamonds on his farm near Murfreesboro in 1906?
John Wesley Huddleston
John Wesley Huddleston, a farmer nicknamed 'Diamond John', picked up the first two diamonds on his land in August 1906 and sold the property for $36,000 as thousands of prospectors poured in.
Q 20Hot Springs Reservation, created by Congress in 1832, is notable as what?
The first federal land reserved for recreation
Hot Springs Reservation of 1832 was the first federal land reserved for recreation, 40 years before Yellowstone; it became a national park in 1921 and got the first America the Beautiful quarter in 2010.
Arkansas grows roughly half of the rice produced in the United States, mostly on the Grand Prairie and Delta of its eastern counties, and has ranked first among rice states since the 1970s.
Q 24Which Grand Prairie town calls itself the Rice and Duck Capital of the World?
Stuttgart
Stuttgart, founded by German settlers in 1878 and named for the German city, sits on the Grand Prairie under the Mississippi Flyway and hosts the World's Championship Duck Calling Contest each November.
Q 25Arkansas's official nickname, "The Natural State", was created in the 1970s for what purpose?
Tourism advertising
The Department of Parks and Tourism coined 'The Natural State' in the 1970s for tourism advertising, replacing 'Land of Opportunity'; the legislature made it the official nickname in 1995.
Q 26Which retailer, founded in Arkansas in 1962, has its headquarters in Bentonville?
Walmart
Walmart grew from Sam Walton's first discount store, opened in 1962, into a company with annual revenue past $600 billion, run from its headquarters in Bentonville.
Q 27In which Arkansas town did Sam Walton open the very first Wal-Mart Discount City on July 2, 1962?
Rogers
Sam Walton opened the first Wal-Mart Discount City in Rogers on 2 July 1962; he had run a five-and-dime on the Bentonville square since 1950 after an earlier variety store elsewhere in Arkansas.
Q 28In which Arkansas town did Sam Walton buy his first store, a Ben Franklin franchise, after WWII?
Newport
Sam Walton bought the Ben Franklin variety store in Newport in 1945 with a $20,000 loan from his father-in-law and $5,000 saved from Army pay, then lost the lease in 1950 and moved to Bentonville.
Q 29Which meat-processing giant is headquartered in Springdale, Arkansas?
Tyson Foods
Tyson Foods, started by John W. Tyson hauling chickens out of Springdale in the 1930s, owns the Jimmy Dean, Hillshire Farm and Ball Park brands and is headquartered in Springdale.
Q 30Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville was founded by which retail heiress?
Alice Walton
Alice Walton, Sam Walton's daughter, founded Crystal Bridges, which opened on 11 November 2011 in Moshe Safdie-designed pavilions set in Ozark forest; a Walmart endowment keeps general admission free.