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50 free Mississippi River trivia questions with answers. The Mississippi drains nearly everything between the Rockies and the Appalachians, and this quiz follows it the whole way down. It starts at Lake Itasca, where the river is three feet deep and you can hop across on stones, and ends at the Birdfoot Delta and the engineering that stops the whole thing from abandoning New Orleans for the Atchafalaya. Along the way you get the explorers (Álvarez de Pineda, de Soto, Marquette and Jolliet, La Salle), the steamboat age and Mark Twain's pen name, the Civil War at Vicksburg, the Sultana disaster, the 1927 flood that made Herbert Hoover, the earthquakes that created Reelfoot Lake, and oddities like the Illinois town stranded on the Missouri bank. Geography, history, science and a little music. Questions range from easy to expert, and every answer has been checked against a primary or encyclopaedic source.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Mississippi traditionally begins at which Minnesota lake?
Itasca
The lake sits 1,475 feet above sea level in Itasca State Park, and visitors can walk across the river on stepping stones there.
Q 02Which is the only US river longer than the Mississippi?
The Missouri
Measured from the Missouri's own source in Montana, the combined system runs about 3,710 miles, the fourth longest in the world.
Q 03Per the USGS, how long is the Mississippi from its source lake to the Gulf of Mexico?
2,340 miles
The traditional figure has shifted over the years as engineers straightened bends and the delta grew.
Q 04The name Mississippi comes from Misi-ziibi, a phrase in which Native American language?
Ojibwe
The French rendered it as Misi zipi; a Sioux guide travelling with the first French explorers called it Ne Tongo, 'big river'.
Q 05What does the name Misi-ziibi, from which 'Mississippi' derives, mean?
Great River
Upstream sections had less flattering Ojibwe names, including one translated as 'Miserable Wretched Dirty Water River'.
Q 06Henry Schoolcraft coined the name of the Mississippi's source lake from Latin words meaning what?
True head
He mashed together the end of veritas and the start of caput; the Ojibwe called the lake Omashkoozo-zaaga'igan, Elk Lake.
Q 07Roughly how deep is the Mississippi where it leaves its source lake?
About 3 feet
By the time it nears the mouth the same river is around 200 feet deep.
Q 08Where is the deepest point of the Mississippi River?
New Orleans
It reaches about 200 feet there; below Cairo the river typically runs 50 to 100 feet deep.
Q 09The Mississippi runs through or along how many US states?
Ten
Wisconsin, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi lie on the east bank; Iowa, Missouri and Arkansas on the west; Minnesota and Louisiana at either end.
Q 10The 'Middle Mississippi' runs 190 miles from St. Louis to the Ohio confluence at which Illinois town?
Cairo
The Middle Mississippi drops 220 feet over about 180 miles, much steeper than the sluggish lower river.
Q 11Which tributary carries more water than the Mississippi itself at the point where the two meet?
The Ohio
Its long-term mean flow at the confluence is about 281,500 cubic feet per second against the Mississippi's 208,200 just upstream.
Q 12Saint Anthony Falls, the only true waterfall on the Mississippi, is in which city?
Minneapolis
The lock there was closed in 2015 to stop invasive Asian carp moving upstream.
Q 13Which lake near Grand Rapids, Minnesota, is the Mississippi's widest point at more than 11 miles across?
Winnibigoshish
Lake Onalaska near La Crosse, created by a dam, is more than four miles wide.
Q 21Who was the first recorded European to reach the Mississippi, in 1519?
Alonso Álvarez de Pineda
De Soto followed 22 years later and died beside the river the following year.
Q 22Hernando de Soto reached the Mississippi in 1541 and gave it what Spanish name?
Río del Espíritu Santo
It means River of the Holy Spirit; de Soto died the following year and was buried in the river.
Q 23In 1682 La Salle claimed the Mississippi valley for France and named the river after whom?
Jean-Baptiste Colbert
The region itself he called La Louisiane, after King Louis XIV.
Q 14The sport of water skiing was invented in 1922 on which wide stretch of the Mississippi?
Lake Pepin
Eighteen-year-old Ralph Samuelson used two boards and a clothesline as a towrope at Lake City, Minnesota.
Q 15Which 1963 floodgate complex stops the Mississippi from changing course away from its lower cities?
The Old River Control Structure
About 30 percent of the flow is deliberately let through to the shortcut channel, whose steeper path to the Gulf would otherwise capture the whole river.
Q 16Which river, a distributary in Louisiana, would capture the Mississippi's flow if engineers let it?
The Atchafalaya
It takes 30 percent of the combined Mississippi and Red River flow through a floodgate complex built in 1963.
Q 17Which Mississippi delta lobe, active through all recorded history, is named for its shape?
Birdfoot
It is also called the Balize Delta after La Balize, the first French settlement at the river's mouth.
Q 18Sediment build-up makes the lower Mississippi jump to a new path to the Gulf roughly how often?
Every thousand years or so
The process is called avulsion or delta switching, and modern engineering exists to hold it off.
Q 19Which earthquake zone between Memphis and St. Louis produced magnitude-8 quakes in 1811–12?
New Madrid
The shocks were felt across the Midwest and as far away as the East Coast.
Q 20Which Tennessee lake was created by the great earthquakes of 1811–12?
Reelfoot
The quakes struck a sparsely settled frontier, which is why they killed few people despite their size.
Q 24Which pair of French explorers began exploring the Mississippi in 1673?
Marquette and Jolliet
Marquette wanted to call it the River of the Immaculate Conception; a Sioux guide called it Ne Tongo.
Q 25Which Frenchman founded the city on the river crescent, about 100 miles above the mouth, in 1718?
Bienville
His brother Iberville had rediscovered the river's mouth in 1699 after La Salle's death.
Q 26The United States gained control of the whole river through which 1803 deal?
The Louisiana Purchase
Pinckney's Treaty of 1795 had earlier secured Americans the right to navigate the river through Spanish territory.
Q 27Which pre-Columbian city near the Mississippi, once larger than London, was occupied from about 600 to 1400 AD?
Cahokia
Its mounds stand across the river from St. Louis; the largest, Monks Mound, is bigger at its base than the Great Pyramid.
Q 28In which year did the first steamboat travel down the Lower Mississippi from the Ohio?
1811
Its maiden voyage coincided with the great earthquakes shaking the river.
Q 29Mark Twain took his pen name from a leadsman's cry meaning the river was how deep?
Two fathoms
Twelve feet was safe water for a steamboat; Twain worked as a river pilot before the Civil War.
Q 30Which 1883 Mark Twain book is a memoir of his years as a steamboat pilot?
Life on the Mississippi
It covers the steamboat era of 1830 to 1870 and even sneaks in a passage from the unfinished Huckleberry Finn.