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This Montana trivia quiz has 49 free questions with answers and covers the whole state: the capital and biggest city, the Spanish motto and the state animal, flower, bird, fish, tree, fossil and gemstones; Glacier National Park and the Montana entrances to Yellowstone; Triple Divide Peak, Flathead Lake, the headwaters of the Missouri and the free-flowing Yellowstone; the gold camps at Bannack and Virginia City, the Copper Kings of Butte, Custer at the Little Bighorn, Jeannette Rankin's lonely votes against war, and the missiles at Malmstrom. Questions run from easy ones any Montanan should get to details for people who have driven the Hi-Line, so it works for a classroom, a bar in Missoula or a family that just visited Glacier. Difficulty is marked on every question. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on Montana, its symbols, its parks and its history, and each question shows its citation.
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Q 01What is the capital of Montana?
Helena
Helena has been Montana's capital since 1875; the city grew from the Last Chance Gulch gold strike and kept the role at statehood.
Q 02Which is Montana's most populous city?
Billings
Billings, with about 117,000 residents at the 2020 census, is Montana's only city above 100,000 people; Missoula and Great Falls come next.
Q 03Montana is the fourth-largest state by area, after Alaska, Texas and which other?
California
California, at about 164,000 square miles, ranks third; Montana's 147,000 square miles make it fourth, ahead of New Mexico.
Q 04What is Montana's official state motto, written in Spanish?
Oro y Plata
Oro y Plata, Spanish for gold and silver, honours the gold and silver mining boom that built the state and appears on the state seal.
Q 05Which of these is NOT one of Montana's nicknames?
The Silver State
The Silver State is Nevada's nickname; Montana goes by The Treasure State, Big Sky Country and The Last Best Place.
Q 06Montana became a state on November 8 of which year?
1889
Montana entered the Union on November 8, 1889, under the Enabling Act of 1889, the omnibus bill that also admitted North Dakota, South Dakota and Washington.
Q 07Which three Canadian provinces border Montana?
Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan
Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan share Montana's northern border; Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming are its US neighbours.
Q 08Montana's state animal is which creature, of which the state has the largest population in the lower 48?
The grizzly bear
The grizzly bear became Montana's state animal in 1983 after a vote by schoolchildren; the Northern Continental Divide and Yellowstone ecosystems hold the most grizzlies in the lower 48.
Q 09What is Montana's state flower?
Bitterroot
Bitterroot, a low pink-flowered plant Meriwether Lewis collected in 1806, became Montana's state flower in 1895; the Bitterroot Mountains and valley take its name.
Q 10Montana's state bird is which songbird?
Western meadowlark
The Western meadowlark, a yellow-breasted songbird with a black V on its chest, was chosen as Montana's state bird in 1931 by a vote of schoolchildren.
Q 11What is Montana's official state fossil?
A duck-billed dinosaur, Maiasaura
A duck-billed dinosaur, Maiasaura, became Montana's state fossil in 1985; Jack Horner found its nesting colonies at Egg Mountain near Choteau.
Q 12Which two gemstones are official symbols of Montana?
Sapphire and moss agate
Sapphire and moss agate became Montana's twin state gemstones in 1969; Yogo sapphires from the Little Belt Mountains are prized for their cornflower blue.
Q 13Montana's state fish is which trout?
Westslope cutthroat
The Westslope cutthroat, a native trout named for the red slash under its jaw, was designated Montana's state fish in 1977.
Q 21Which railway built Glacier National Park's Swiss-style hotels and chalets in the 1910s?
The Great Northern
Louis Hill's company wanted to sell the park as America's Switzerland; its transcontinental line is known as the Hi-Line.
Q 22Glacier National Park is known by what nickname?
The Crown of the Continent
The Crown of the Continent was coined by conservationist George Bird Grinnell, who campaigned for the park's creation in 1910; it has more than 130 named lakes.
Q 23What is Montana's only telephone area code?
406
406 has covered all of Montana since the area-code system began in 1947; 307 is Wyoming, 208 Idaho and 701 North Dakota.
Q 14Montana's state tree is which pine?
Ponderosa
Ponderosa pine, chosen as Montana's state tree in 1949, grows in open, dry forests across the state's lower mountain slopes.
Q 15Montana's highest point, Granite Peak, lies in which mountain range?
The Beartooth Mountains
The Beartooth Mountains, straddling the Wyoming line in south-central Montana, hold Granite Peak, which at 12,807 feet is the state's highest point.
Q 16Which lake is the largest natural freshwater lake in Montana?
Flathead
Flathead Lake covers about 197 square miles south of Glacier National Park, larger by surface area than Lake Tahoe; Fort Peck, the state's largest body of water, is a reservoir.
Q 17The Missouri River is formed at Three Forks by the Jefferson, the Madison and which third river?
The Gallatin
The Gallatin, named by Lewis and Clark for Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin, joins the Jefferson and Madison to form the Missouri, which flows north to Great Falls before turning east.
Q 18What distinction does the Yellowstone River, which crosses Montana, hold in the lower 48?
Longest undammed river
Longest undammed river in the lower 48: the Yellowstone runs about 692 miles from Wyoming across Montana to the Missouri just inside North Dakota with no dam on its main stem.
Q 19All Montana rivers west of the Continental Divide drain into which great river?
The Columbia
The Columbia receives them all; the Clark Fork, rising near Butte, crosses into Idaho and reaches the Columbia through Lake Pend Oreille.
Q 20Glacier National Park is paired with which Canadian park as the first International Peace Park?
Waterton Lakes
Waterton Lakes joined Glacier in 1932 to form the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, the world's first, which UNESCO listed as a World Heritage Site in 1995.
Q 24Which president signed the act creating Yellowstone, the world's first national park, in 1872?
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant signed the Yellowstone Act on March 1, 1872, setting aside more than two million acres in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho as a public park.
Q 25Custer's Last Stand at the Little Bighorn was fought in Montana in which year?
1876
On June 25, 1876, Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors led by Crazy Horse and Gall wiped out Custer and the five companies of the 7th Cavalry with him.
Q 26The Lakota and other Plains peoples know the Little Bighorn fight by what name?
The Greasy Grass
The Greasy Grass is the Lakota name for the Little Bighorn River and its valley; the fight there killed 268 on the US side, including Custer and two of his brothers.
Q 27Jeannette Rankin, the first woman in Congress, did what in both 1917 and 1941?
Voted against declaring war
Rankin "Voted against declaring war" both times: one of 50 House members opposing war with Germany in 1917, and in 1941 the lone vote against war with Japan.
Q 28Butte earned what nickname during its early-20th-century mining boom?
The Richest Hill on Earth
The Richest Hill on Earth: Butte's mines made it Montana's largest city, with about 39,000 people in 1910, and its labour militancy earned it the name Gibraltar of Unionism.
Q 29What were the industrialists who fought over Butte's mineral wealth, like William Clark and Marcus Daly, known as?
Copper Kings
The Copper Kings were William A. Clark, Marcus Daly and F. Augustus Heinze; Daly's Anaconda company went on to dominate Montana politics for decades.
Q 30The upper Clark Fork River, rising at Butte, holds what unwanted national distinction?
Largest Superfund site in the US
Largest Superfund site in the US: the Clark Fork complex runs about 120 river miles from Butte's Berkeley Pit past Anaconda's smelter wastes to the former Milltown Dam.