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50 free Oregon trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
49 free Oregon trivia questions with answers. Oregon is a state of superlatives and oddities: the deepest lake in America, the largest living organism on Earth, the first bottle bill, no sales tax, and a name nobody can agree on the origin of. This quiz covers the geography (Crater Lake, Mount Hood, Hells Canyon, the Columbia and the coast), the history (Lewis and Clark, Astoria, the Oregon Trail, statehood in 1859, the balloon bomb of 1945), the cities and companies (Portland, Salem, Eugene, Nike, Intel, Powell's), the culture (The Simpsons, The Goonies, Ken Kesey, Beverly Cleary, Steve Prefontaine, the Trail Blazers) and the laws and quirks that make Oregonians proud. Roughly a third of the questions are easy enough for anyone who has driven I-5; the rest climb steadily to details that will test lifelong residents. It works as a solo test or a ready-made Pacific Northwest round for a quiz night. Every answer has been checked against a reference source and each question shows its citation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital of Oregon?
Salem
It is only the state's third-largest city; the biggest has nearly four times the population.
Q 02Oregon became the 33rd state on Valentine's Day of which year?
1859
News travelled so slowly that nobody in Oregon knew about it until March 15.
Q 03Which river forms most of Oregon's eastern border with Idaho?
The Snake
The Columbia does the same job on the northern border with Washington, and the 42nd parallel marks the line with California and Nevada.
Q 04What is Oregon's highest point, at 11,249 feet?
Mount Hood
It is a dormant volcano in the Cascades, and Timberline Lodge on its slopes played the Overlook Hotel in The Shining.
Q 05Oregon's only national park surrounds the deepest body of water in the United States. What is it called?
Crater Lake
It fills the caldera left when Mount Mazama collapsed about 7,700 years ago and reaches 1,949 feet deep.
Q 06Which volcano collapsed to create the caldera that Oregon's famous deep blue lake now fills?
Mount Mazama
Wizard Island, the cinder cone near the west shore, grew afterwards inside the caldera.
Q 07What is the largest single living organism, found beneath Oregon's Malheur National Forest?
A honey fungus
The Armillaria ostoyae spreads under about 2,200 acres of forest and may be thousands of years old.
Q 08Which sportswear giant, headquartered near Beaverton, is Oregon's largest public company?
Nike
It began in 1964 under a different name, founded by Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight; Adidas's US headquarters is also in the state.
Q 09Under what name was Nike founded on January 25, 1964?
Blue Ribbon Sports
Bowerman coached track at the University of Oregon and famously cooked an early sole on his wife's waffle iron.
Q 10Oregon is one of only five states without which tax?
Sales tax
Voters have rejected a sales tax nine times, the last in 1993 by 75 to 25 percent.
Q 11Oregon's 'kicker' law returns money to taxpayers when what happens?
Income tax collections beat forecasts by 2 percent or more
Refunds have gone out in seven of the eleven two-year budget periods since 1979, and voters put the rule in the constitution in 2000.
Q 12In 1971 Oregon passed the first US law of its kind requiring a deposit on what?
Beverage containers
The Bottle Bill was meant to fight litter; ten states have since copied it.
Q 13Oregon was the first US state to legalise what, in 1994?
Physician-assisted suicide
Q 21Which city has the most breweries in the world, according to the state's boosters?
Portland
The state's beer culture goes back to the 19th century, when Henry Weinhard offered to pump beer through the Skidmore Fountain.
Q 22Which nickname for Oregon's largest city comes from the tree stumps left as the city was cleared in the 1800s?
Stumptown
The city was also once notorious as one of America's most dangerous ports, home of the 'shanghai' kidnappings.
Q 23Which town near the Columbia's mouth was the first permanent English-speaking settlement west of the Rockies?
Astoria
John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company founded Fort Astoria in 1811.
The Death with Dignity Act survived a repeal vote and a Supreme Court challenge; recreational cannabis followed in 2014.
Q 14Until August 2023, what were Oregon drivers not allowed to do at a petrol station?
Pump their own gas
The ban dated from 1951; New Jersey is now the only state where self-service is still illegal.
Q 15Oregon is the only US state with an excise tax on which purchase?
New bicycles
It is a flat $15 on bikes costing over $200, in place since 2018.
Q 16Which 1967 law declared all of Oregon's ocean beaches public land?
The Beach Bill
Governor Tom McCall championed it, and a state park near Hood River now carries his name.
Q 17Which Simpsons creator named characters after his family and the streets of his Oregon hometown?
Matt Groening
Flanders, Lovejoy, Quimby and Kearney are all street names in his home city; Springfield, Oregon, is one of many Springfields claimed as the model.
Q 18Which 1985 adventure film about kids in the 'Goon Docks' was shot on Oregon's north coast?
The Goonies
All three distractors were also filmed in Oregon; the Oregon Film Museum sits in the old county jail of the town where it was shot, itself a location.
Q 19Bend, Oregon, is home to the last remaining store of which once-huge video rental chain?
Blockbuster
It became a tourist attraction and the subject of a 2020 documentary.
Q 20Which Oregon bookstore claims to be the largest independent new and used bookstore in the world?
Powell's
Its flagship City of Books fills a whole city block downtown.
Q 24Which town at the end of the pioneer trail served as the territory's first capital from 1848 to 1852?
Oregon City
It was also the territory's first incorporated city; the capital moved to its current home in 1852.
Q 25Where did Lewis and Clark spend the winter of 1805-06, near the mouth of the Columbia?
Fort Clatsop
A replica of the fort stands in Warrenton; the expedition stayed from December to March in near-constant rain.
Q 26What is the 1846 agreement that fixed the US-British North America border at the 49th parallel called?
The Oregon Treaty
Joint occupation had been agreed in 1818; the '54-40 or fight' slogan lost out to compromise.
Q 27Six civilians killed near Bly in May 1945 were the only Americans killed on US soil by what?
A Japanese balloon bomb
Thousands of the balloons were launched across the Pacific; a Sunday-school picnic found one on Gearhart Mountain.
Q 28Oregon's 1844 territorial law banned slavery and also barred which group from entering?
African Americans
A 'whites only' clause remained in the state constitution for decades, and Oregon entered the Union as a 'free' state as part of a Southern deal.
Q 29Which guru's followers built a city on an Oregon ranch in the 1980s and poisoned salad bars with salmonella?
The Rajneeshees
Ma Anand Sheela's 1984 attack sickened hundreds in The Dalles; the story was told in Netflix's Wild Wild Country.
Q 30Which unidentified hijacker parachuted from a Boeing 727 over the Northwest in November 1971 with $200,000?
D. B. Cooper
Some of the ransom money turned up on the banks of the Columbia in 1980; the case remains the only unsolved US air piracy.