San Francisco Trivia
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47 free San Francisco trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
49 free San Francisco trivia questions with answers. San Francisco packs a lot of landmarks into seven square miles, and this quiz covers them. Fifty questions run through the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, the cable cars, Lombard Street and the Painted Ladies; the 1906 earthquake and the Gold Rush that built the city; sourdough, Ghirardelli and Rice-A-Roni; Haight-Ashbury and the Summer of Love; and the 49ers, Giants and Warriors. Easy questions ask which bridge is painted International Orange and which island held a famous prison; the hard ones want who engineered the bridge, how many hairpin turns Lombard Street has, and what the Giants' World Series years were. Good for a trivia night, a class on California, or anyone who loves the city by the bay. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the city and its landmarks, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What colour is the Golden Gate Bridge painted?
International Orange
International Orange was chosen by consulting architect Irving Morrow; the vermilion shade stands out against fog and complements the Marin headlands.
Q 02On the Golden Gate Bridge's opening day in 1937, who alone could cross?
Pedestrians
Pedestrians had the new bridge to themselves on 27 May 1937; the next day President Roosevelt signalled from Washington that it was open to cars.
Q 03Who served as chief engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge?
Joseph Strauss
Joseph Strauss was the Golden Gate Bridge's chief engineer and its leading promoter; Charles Ellis and Leon Moisseiff did much of the detailed structural design under him.
Q 04Why did Alcatraz's federal prison close in 1963?
High running costs
High running costs: everything, even fresh water, had to reach the island by boat, and the salt-worn buildings needed millions of dollars of repairs.
Q 05Which famous gangster was held at Alcatraz?
Al Capone
Al Capone was moved to Alcatraz in 1934 amid reports that he was getting special treatment in his Atlanta prison; on the Rock he played banjo in the inmates' band.
Q 06In 1969, Alcatraz was occupied for 19 months by protesters from which group?
Native Americans
Native Americans organised as Indians of All Tribes held the island from 20 November 1969 to 11 June 1971, claiming it under the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie.
Q 07San Francisco is home to the world's last manually operated version of which transit vehicle?
Cable car
A gripman on each San Francisco cable car clamps onto the moving underground cable by hand; three lines survive from a network that began on Clay Street in 1873.
Q 08Which singer made 'I Left My Heart in San Francisco' his signature song in 1962?
Tony Bennett
Tony Bennett first sang it at San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel in December 1961; when the record came out the next year, it was only the B-side.
Q 09Which San Francisco street has a block of eight hairpin turns?
Lombard Street
Lombard Street got its switchbacks in the 1920s because the hill was too steep for the cars of the day to drive straight down; the block is one-way, downhill only.
Q 10The colourful Victorian houses known as the 'Painted Ladies' stand across from which park?
Alamo Square
Alamo Square's sloping lawn faces the famous Steiner Street row; the name 'Painted Ladies' is newer than it sounds, coming from a 1978 book about the city's brightly repainted Victorians.
Q 11Which fault ruptured for nearly 300 miles in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake?
San Andreas
The San Andreas Fault slipped along 296 miles of northern California; the fires that broke out afterwards burned for days and, with the shaking, destroyed most of the city.
Q 12The 1989 earthquake that struck just before a World Series game is named for which peak?
Loma Prieta
Loma Prieta, a peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains, stood near the epicentre; with so many people already home to watch the game, rush-hour roads were unusually empty, which kept the death toll down.
Q 13San Francisco takes its name from which saint?
Francis of Assisi
Q 21The famous burst of 1960s idealism centred on the Haight is known as what?
The Summer of Love
The Summer of Love drew as many as 100,000 young people to the Haight in 1967; its anthem, 'San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)', was written to promote the Monterey Pop Festival.
Q 22Pier 39 at Fisherman's Wharf is famous for a colony of which animals?
Sea lions
Sea lions took over the marina's docks at Pier 39 by January 1990; on the advice of the Marine Mammal Center the pier let them stay, and the boats made way.
Q 23Which organisation's founding charter was signed in San Francisco in June 1945?
The United Nations
Francis of Assisi founded the Franciscan order, and it was Franciscan friars who set up Mission San Francisco de Asís here in 1776 and named it for him.
Q 14San Francisco was founded by settlers from where in 1776?
New Spain
Settlers from New Spain on the Anza expedition founded the Presidio at the Golden Gate and Mission Dolores a few miles away in 1776.
Q 15The California Gold Rush began in 1848 when gold was found at a sawmill owned by whom?
John Sutter
John Sutter was ruined by the discovery: his workers left to hunt for gold, and squatters overran his land and made off with his crops and cattle.
Q 16What nickname was given to the gold-seekers who flooded into California during the Gold Rush?
Forty-niners
Forty-niners took their name from 1849, the peak year of Gold Rush immigration, when San Francisco grew from a village of about 1,000 people to a boom town of 25,000.
Q 17Which bread is San Francisco's signature loaf?
Sourdough
Sourdough arrived with the bakers of the Gold Rush; Boudin, founded in 1849, says it still raises every loaf from the mother dough it began with a miner's starter.
Q 18Coit Tower overlooks the bay from which San Francisco neighbourhood?
Telegraph Hill
Coit Tower crowns Telegraph Hill; Lillie Hitchcock Coit's 1929 bequest paid for it, and despite the legend it was not designed to look like a fire-hose nozzle.
Q 19The Palace of Fine Arts was built for which 1915 world's fair?
The Panama-Pacific International Exposition
Bernard Maybeck designed the Palace of Fine Arts for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, which celebrated the Panama Canal's opening; its rotunda beside a lagoon was rebuilt in concrete in the 1960s.
Q 20The Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood became the centre of which 1960s movement?
The hippie counterculture
The hippie counterculture drew such crowds to the Haight in 1967 that by October residents staged a mock funeral, 'The Death of the Hippie', to tell would-be newcomers to stay home.
The United Nations Charter was signed in San Francisco by 50 countries; Poland, which had no delegation at the talks, signed later and still counts as a founding member.
Q 24Which San Francisco supervisor, elected in 1977, was one of America's first openly gay elected officials?
Harvey Milk
Harvey Milk served less than a year: in November 1978 he and Mayor George Moscone were shot dead at City Hall by Dan White, a former fellow supervisor.
Q 25Which quarterback led San Francisco to four Super Bowl wins between the 1981 and 1989 seasons?
Joe Montana
Joe Montana was only a third-round draft pick in 1979, yet he won all four Super Bowls he started and was named the game's MVP in three of them.
Q 26The San Francisco Giants moved to the city in 1958 from where?
New York
New York had been the Giants' home since the 1880s; owner Horace Stoneham was planning a move to Minnesota until the Dodgers' owner talked him into heading for California too, keeping their rivalry alive.
Q 27Which manager led the Giants to World Series titles in 2010, 2012 and 2014?
Bruce Bochy
Bruce Bochy's 2012 team won six straight games when one loss would have ended its season, coming back against the Reds and then the Cardinals before sweeping Detroit.
Q 28The Golden State Warriors moved to the Bay Area in 1962 from which city?
Philadelphia
Philadelphia lost the Warriors in 1962, when Franklin Mieuli bought control and moved them west; renamed Golden State in 1971, they played across the bay until returning to San Francisco in 2019.
Q 29Which boxed dinner mix was advertised for decades as 'The San Francisco Treat'?
Rice-A-Roni
Rice-A-Roni, a rice-and-vermicelli mix launched in 1958 by the DeDomenico family's Golden Grain company in San Francisco, came from an Armenian pilaf recipe shared by immigrant Pailadzo Captanian.
Q 30Which sitcom about a widowed father raising three daughters was set in San Francisco?
Full House
Full House was taped on studio sets in the Los Angeles area; apart from its opening credits, only one episode, in the final season, was actually shot in San Francisco.