Boise Trivia
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7correct to beat the crowd
This Boise trivia quiz has 99 free questions with answers and covers Idaho's capital from the French trappers who called it the wooded river to the fastest-growing city in America: how the name is really pronounced, why the statehouse is heated by hot water from underground, who dreamed up the blue football field, and what gets dropped in the Grove Plaza on New Year's Eve. It takes in the Basque Block and Jaialdi, the Greenbelt and its painted dots, Treefort, Bogus Basin, the Old Penitentiary and its resident cat, and the potato fortune that seeded Micron. Easy questions open it (which river? which county?) and the later ones will test people who grew up here (when did the streetcars stop? how far apart are the Greenbelt DOTS?), so it suits a pub quiz on 8th Street, a classroom, a road trip or a game night with the family. Every answer has been checked against an encyclopaedia entry or the institution's own history, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Legend says a French speaker gave Boise its name by shouting what at the sight of its river valley?
The woods!
The woods! Legend puts the cry "Les bois!" at an exploring party's first sight of the river's cottonwoods, though evidence is lacking; French-Canadian trappers were already calling the stream the wooded river.
Q 02How do most longtime Boise residents pronounce the city's name?
BOY-see
BOY-see, with a soft s, is how locals say it; outsiders, national sportscasters among them, tend to say BOY-zee, so the name works as a shibboleth.
Q 03Boise is the county seat of which Idaho county?
Ada
Ada County, home to about 27% of Idahoans, has Boise as its seat; confusingly, Boise County is a different, rural mountain county next door.
Q 04Which city in Idaho's north was the territory's first capital before the government moved to Boise?
Lewiston
Lewiston lost the capital after gold strikes pulled Idaho's population south; the acting governor carried the territorial seal off to Boise, and the fight went to the territory's supreme court.
Q 05What is Boise's long-standing nickname?
City of Trees
City of Trees: settlers irrigated the high-desert townsite and planted orchards and shade trees so eagerly that by 1869 the local paper reported a tree mania, with hotels lining their fronts with young cottonwoods.
Q 06Which Native peoples used the Boise Valley as a winter encampment before white settlement?
Shoshone and Bannock
Shoshone and Bannock bands wintered in the sheltered valley near its hot springs until April 1869, when the U.S. Army rounded them up and marched them to the Fort Hall reservation.
Q 07The Idaho State Capitol is the only U.S. statehouse heated by what?
Geothermal water
Geothermal water, pumped from 3,000 feet down, heats the Capitol; Boise first drilled for it in 1890, and after one owner tried it in his new Warm Springs Avenue mansion in 1892, a shared heating line for the street followed.
Q 08The Idaho State Capitol's sandstone was quarried from which landmark east of downtown Boise?
Table Rock
Table Rock sandstone was cut and hauled by inmates of the Old Idaho Penitentiary, which sat just below the quarry, in blocks weighing as much as ten tons.
Q 09The Winged Victory statue in the Idaho State Capitol was a gift to the US from which country?
France
France sent the plaster Winged Victory on the 1949 Merci Train, boxcars of thank-you gifts delivered to every state; the marble original, unearthed on Samothrace in 1863, stands in the Louvre.
Q 10What do the 43 small stars in the Idaho Capitol dome mark?
Idaho's order of statehood
Idaho's order of statehood: it became the 43rd state on July 3, 1890, so its star went onto the flag the very next day, and that 43-star flag flew for just one year.
Q 11Which company built the Boise Depot, the 1925 train station looking down Capitol Boulevard?
Union Pacific
Union Pacific opened the depot in 1925, when main-line trains first ran through Boise, and thousands turned out to watch the first transcontinental engine steam in.
Q 12The Boise River Greenbelt begins in the east at which dam?
Lucky Peak Dam
Lucky Peak Dam marks the eastern end of a path that follows both riverbanks west to Eagle; in 1970 a city councilman promoted the young project with film shot from a helicopter.
Q 13Boise's Whitewater Park reshapes the river near downtown for kayakers and fans of which other sport?
Surfing
Q 21Bogus Basin, Boise's ski area, likely owes its name to 19th-century swindlers who did what?
Made counterfeit gold dust
Made counterfeit gold dust: crooks hiding out in the hills above Boise in the 1860s are said to have heated lead filings with a pinch of real gold to pass off as the real thing.
Q 22What covers the walls of Freak Alley, a service alley between 8th and 9th streets in downtown Boise?
Murals
Murals: it began in 2002 when an artist drew on a cafe's back-alley doorway, and it grew into what bills itself as the Northwest's largest open-air mural gallery, repainted by dozens of artists at a time.
Q 23Why did Boise State make its turf blue in 1986?
National attention
Surfing: the park's adjustable wave shaper can be reset between a smooth green wave and a churning hole, which keeps a rideable wave in the river through most of the year.
Q 14What do the white dots painted along Boise's Greenbelt path tell walkers and cyclists?
Their distance from downtown
Their distance from downtown: a dot sits every tenth of a mile, so NW 0.5 means half a mile west of the 8th Street bridge on the north bank, a spot a caller can pass on in an emergency.
Q 15Each summer, the popular six-mile float down the Boise River to Ann Morrison Park begins at which park?
Barber Park
Barber Park is the put-in; before each season opens, the Boise Fire dive team clears hazards from the river so tubers and rafters can drift down to the take-out.
Q 16Which Treefort spin-off did President Obama praise during his 2015 visit to Boise?
Hackfort
Hackfort got its shout-out in a speech at Boise State the day after Obama's annual address to Congress; within weeks the year-old tech festival had the Idaho Department of Labor as a partner.
Q 17Treefort's late-March timing was partly inspired by bands heading home to the Northwest from which festival?
SXSW
SXSW in Austin wraps up the week before Treefort, so the founders could book Northwest bands that were already driving home through Boise.
Q 18J. R. Simplot sealed a handshake deal in the 1960s to supply frozen french fries to which chain?
McDonald's
McDonald's founder Ray Kroc shook on it because fresh russets ran short every summer; Simplot's chemists had found a way to freeze fries without turning them to mush.
Q 19Which company got startup capital from J. R. Simplot's potato fortune in the early 1980s?
Micron Technology
Micron Technology was a fledgling start-up when Simplot bought in around 1980; it grew into one of the world's biggest chipmakers and made him a second fortune.
Q 20Which animals did the teenage J. R. Simplot fatten on potatoes and wild horse meat for his first big profit?
Hogs
Hogs were nearly worthless when the young Simplot bought them; he fed them cheaply until prices recovered, sold at a profit and put the money into the potato business.
National attention was the aim: the man behind it compared it to painting your house a different colour so the neighbours notice, and the plan stayed secret until it was announced for fear it would be shot down.
Q 24Whose idea was it to make Boise State's new artificial turf blue in 1986?
The athletic director
The athletic director, Gene Bleymaier, took the idea straight to the university president, who backed it; when the field was unveiled, critics mocked it as Lake Bleymaier.
Q 25Boise State's blue football field is popularly nicknamed what?
Smurf Turf
Smurf Turf is the nickname outsiders reach for; locals, players and the school itself simply call the field The Blue.
Q 26Which league's 2011 ban on any playing surface that isn't green is known as the "Boise rule"?
The NFL
The NFL voted in 2011 to keep every field green, heading off any club tempted to sell a sponsor a blue, orange or purple surface, though no team had publicly proposed one.
Q 27Which La Liga club played a 2015 friendly on real grass laid over Boise State's blue turf?
Athletic Bilbao
Athletic Bilbao fields only players with Basque ties, a fitting guest for a city with one of America's largest Basque communities; it beat Mexico's Club Tijuana 2–0 before 21,948 fans.
Q 28Boise State's football home went by what name for its first 44 seasons before a 2014 naming-rights deal?
Bronco Stadium
Bronco Stadium was itself a hand-me-down name: an earlier Bronco Stadium opened on campus in 1950, and the present bowl took over the title in 1970 before a grocery chain bought the rights.
Q 29Which team did Boise State stun in the Fiesta Bowl to cap its undefeated 2006 season?
Oklahoma
Oklahoma fell 43–42 in overtime when Boise State gambled on a Statue of Liberty trick play for two points; minutes later the scorer, Ian Johnson, proposed to Boise State's head cheerleader on live TV.
Q 30Which Boise State quarterback went 50–3 as a starter, finishing in 2011 with the most wins in FBS history?
Kellen Moore
Kellen Moore lost only three games in four seasons, yet no pro team drafted him in 2012; he signed as a free agent, spent six seasons mostly as a backup and later became a head coach in the pros.