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This Portland trivia quiz has 48 free questions with answers and covers the Oregon city from the 1845 coin toss that named it to Portlandia, Voodoo Doughnut and 'Keep Portland Weird': the rivers and bridges, Forest Park and the rose gardens, Powell's City of Books, the Trail Blazers, Timbers and Thorns, Mount Hood and Timberline Lodge, the Vanport flood, Nike's roots in the suburbs, and the Simpsons characters named after its streets. A handful of questions cover the older Portland in Maine that lent the city its name. It is written for locals who think they know Stumptown, transplants still learning it, and anyone running a Pacific Northwest round at trivia night. Easy questions cover the nicknames and landmarks; hard ones get into funiculars-worth of detail on bridges, mayors and lava fields. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference such as Wikipedia or an official site, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The coin used to name Portland, known as the Portland Penny, was minted in which year?
1835
The Portland Penny is an 1835 US copper cent, a decade older than the 1845 toss it decided; it is displayed at the Oregon Historical Society in Portland.
Q 02Portland sits at the confluence of the Columbia River and which other river?
Willamette
The Willamette flows north into the Columbia at Portland's northern edge; Lewis and Clark passed the site in 1805, and Clark explored the lower Willamette in April 1806.
Q 03Portland's early nickname 'Stumptown' came from what?
Trees cut to build it
Stumptown mocked the stumps left standing as trees were cut to build the town; the site had been called 'The Clearing', and at its 1851 incorporation Portland had just over 800 people.
Q 04Portland's 'Rose City' nickname dates to 1888, but in what year did the city make it official?
2003
The council formally adopted 'City of Roses' in 2003; Georgiana Pittock, the Oregonian publisher's wife, had founded the Portland Rose Society in 1889, and the first Rose Festival ran in 1907.
Q 05Pioneer Courthouse Square, opened in 1984, occupies the block once home to what?
The Portland Hotel
Pioneer Courthouse Square, opened in April 1984 with bricks sold to donors by name, covers the block where the Portland Hotel stood from 1890 until 1951, then a parking lot.
Q 06How much of downtown Portland does Powell's flagship bookstore take up?
A full city block
Powell's City of Books fills a full city block on West Burnside, about 68,000 square feet; Walter Powell founded it in 1971, and the flagship has nine colour-coded rooms.
Q 07Roughly how wide is Mill Ends Park, once Guinness's world's smallest park?
2 feet
Mill Ends Park is a circle about two feet across; Oregon Journal columnist Dick Fagan planted flowers in an empty lamppost hole in 1948 and claimed leprechauns lived there.
Q 08Portlandia is the second-largest copper repoussé work in the US after which one?
The Statue of Liberty
Only the Statue of Liberty is a larger hammered-copper figure; Raymond Kaskey's 1985 Portlandia, based on the city seal, came up the river by barge to the Portland Building.
Q 09Which two doughnuts did Voodoo Doughnut stop selling by 2006 after a warning from health officials?
NyQuil Glazed and Pepto-Crushed-Tums
The NyQuil Glazed and Pepto-Crushed-Tums doughnuts were dropped after health officials warned against medicating pastries; founders 'Cat Daddy' Pogson and Tres Shannon kept the pink boxes and the in-shop weddings.
Q 10The 'Keep Portland Weird' slogan was borrowed from which other US city?
Austin
Austin's 'Keep Austin Weird' campaign inspired it; Music Millennium owner Terry Currier brought the slogan north, and the mural faces Voodoo Doughnut in Old Town.
Q 11Roughly how many acres does Forest Park, one of America's largest urban forest reserves, cover?
5,100
Forest Park covers more than 5,100 acres, about 5,200, along the Tualatin Mountains west of downtown; roughly 27 of the Wildwood Trail's 30 miles run through it.
Q 12The International Rose Test Garden in Washington Park was set up in 1917 to protect what?
European hybrid roses during WWI
It is the oldest continuously operating public rose test garden in the US, with more than 10,000 bushes of some 650 varieties.
Q 13Which architect designed the Portland Japanese Garden's Cultural Village, added in 2017?
Kengo Kuma
Q 21Tilikum Crossing, opened across the river in 2015, is unusual among big US bridges because it bans what?
Private cars
Tilikum Crossing carries MAX trains, buses, streetcars, cyclists and pedestrians but no private cars; its name is Chinook Jargon for 'people', and it was the metro area's first new river bridge since the Fremont in 1973.
Q 22The St. Johns Bridge, built in 1931, is a suspension bridge in which architectural style?
Gothic revival
David Steinman's 1931 St. Johns Bridge is Gothic revival, with pointed-arch steel towers about 400 feet tall painted 'St. Johns green'; Cathedral Park beneath it takes its name from those arches.
Q 23Portland lies on top of a dormant volcanic zone with what name?
Kengo Kuma, the Tokyo architect of the Japan National Stadium, designed the Cultural Village that opened in April 2017; the garden itself dates to 1967 in Washington Park.
Q 14The Trail Blazers won their only NBA championship in which year?
1977
Portland beat Philadelphia in six games in June 1977, with Bill Walton as Finals MVP, in only the franchise's seventh season; that title run also started the 814-game home sellout streak.
Q 15In the 1984 NBA draft the Trail Blazers picked Sam Bowie second overall, one spot ahead of which player?
Michael Jordan
Portland took Bowie second and Chicago grabbed Michael Jordan third, behind Houston's Hakeem Olajuwon; the Blazers repeated the pattern in 2007, taking Greg Oden ahead of Kevin Durant.
Q 16The Trail Blazers' 814 consecutive home sellouts, 1977 to 1995, set a record for what?
American major pro sports
It began in the 1977 championship season, decades before the arena was renamed the Moda Center; the Red Sox later ran a longer streak.
Q 17What does the Timbers' mascot Timber Joey do each time the team scores?
Chainsaws a slab off a log
Timber Joey chainsaws a slab off a log after every Timbers goal and hands it to the scorer; he took over from Timber Jim in June 2008, three years before the club joined MLS.
Q 18The Timbers won the 2015 MLS Cup 2-1 against which club, thanks to the fastest goal in MLS Cup history?
Columbus Crew
Diego Valeri scored 27 seconds in against the Columbus Crew at Mapfre Stadium on December 6, 2015, and Rodney Wallace added the second; Portland held on 2-1 for its first MLS Cup.
Q 19The Portland Thorns' recognised supporters' group goes by what name?
Rose City Riveters
The Rose City Riveters, formed when the Thorns launched in 2013, occupy the north end of Providence Park; the Thorns won the inaugural NWSL title that year.
Q 20The Steel Bridge, opened in 1912, is the only bridge in the world with what feature?
Double decks that lift independently
Its double decks lift independently, the lower rail deck telescoping into the upper, a design found on no other bridge; it replaced an 1888 span that was the West Coast's first steel bridge.
Boring Lava Field
The Boring Lava Field, named for the town of Boring east of the city, holds dozens of small Plio-Pleistocene vents; Mount Tabor, an extinct cinder cone in the southeast, rises to 636 feet.
Q 24Mount Hood, the peak that dominates Portland's eastern horizon on clear days, is how tall?
11,249 ft
Mount Hood stands 11,249 feet, Oregon's highest peak, an active stratovolcano named in 1792 for British admiral Samuel Hood by Lieutenant William Broughton of Vancouver's expedition.
Q 25Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood served as the exterior of the Overlook Hotel in which film?
The Shining
Stanley Kubrick used Timberline Lodge's exterior for the Overlook Hotel in The Shining (1980), changing the fateful room number from 217 to 237 at the lodge's request; the WPA built the lodge in 1936-37.
Q 26What destroyed Vanport, briefly Oregon's second-largest city, on Memorial Day 1948?
A river flood
A Columbia River flood breached a 200-foot section of railroad berm at about 4:05 p.m.; 15 people died and some 18,000 lost their homes, and Delta Park and Portland International Raceway later rose on the site.
Q 27The college that refused to close after the Vanport flood and reopened downtown became which institution?
Portland State University
The Vanport Extension Center, set up in 1946 for returning veterans, reopened downtown after the flood and became Portland State College in 1955 and Portland State University in 1969.
Q 28Which Portland-built ship is the most decorated in US naval history for one action?
USS Liberty
USS Liberty, launched at Portland's Oregon Shipbuilding yard in 1945 as a Victory ship, was attacked by Israeli forces on June 8, 1967; its crew's honours include a Medal of Honor for Captain William McGonagle.
Q 29Roughly how many blocks did Portland's Great Fire of 1873 destroy?
Twenty
The fire of August 2, 1873, burned about twenty blocks (22 by most counts) of the waterfront district and did $1.3 million in damage; the city nonetheless grew to 46,385 people by the 1890 census.
Q 30Portland's bronze four-bowl drinking fountains are named after which lumber baron who paid for the first 20?
Simon Benson
Simon Benson, a teetotal timber millionaire, gave $10,000 in 1912 for the first 20 fountains, partly to keep loggers out of saloons; 52 four-bowl Benson Bubblers stand downtown, and one went to sister city Sapporo.