Tucson Trivia
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98 free Tucson trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
45 free Tucson trivia questions with answers. This Tucson trivia quiz digs into the whole story of the Old Pueblo: the Spanish presidio of 1775, the O'odham name that means "the base of the hill is black," the Gadsden Purchase, the decade as territorial capital, and the founding of the University of Arizona. It also covers the places that make the city what it is today: Saguaro National Park, Mission San Xavier del Bac, the aircraft boneyard at Davis-Monthan, Kitt Peak, Biosphere 2, Mount Lemmon and Sabino Canyon. Expect food and culture too: Sonoran hot dogs, the chimichanga origin story, the Gem and Mineral Show, rodeo days off school, El Tour de Tucson, Hotel Congress and the Dillinger gang, Old Tucson Studios and Linda Ronstadt. Difficulty ranges from questions any resident can answer to sister-city and Wildcat-lore stumpers. Every answer has been checked against a reference page, mostly Wikipedia and the National Park Service, so the facts hold up whether you're a lifelong Tucsonan, a snowbird, a UA student or planning a trip.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Tucson was founded in 1775 as which kind of Spanish outpost?
Military fort
A military fort: Irish-born Spanish officer Hugo O'Conor picked the site for the Presidio San Agustín del Tucsón in 1775, and soldiers marched north from Tubac the next year to build it.
Q 02A giant whitewashed 'A' for the University of Arizona sits on which landmark west of downtown?
Sentinel Peak
Sentinel Peak earned its everyday name, 'A' Mountain, after students built the 160-foot basalt 'A' in 1916 following a football win over Pomona College.
Q 03Tucson is commonly known by which nickname?
The Old Pueblo
'The Old Pueblo' is commonly traced to an 1880 mayoral telegram announcing that the 'ancient and honorable pueblo' had a railroad, a phrase newspaper writers then shortened.
Q 04Tucson served as capital of the Arizona Territory during which years?
1867–1877
Tucson was territorial capital from 1867 to 1877; Prescott held it before and after, and Phoenix took over for good in 1889.
Q 05Tucson became part of the United States in 1854 through which land deal?
The Gadsden Purchase
The Gadsden Purchase bought the land south of the Gila River for $10 million; the U.S. Army did not formally take control of Tucson until March 1856.
Q 06Tucson is the seat of which Arizona county?
Pima
Pima County, one of Arizona's four original counties, once took in nearly all of the territory south of the Gila River; Cochise and Graham counties were later carved out of it.
Q 07The University of Arizona, the first university in the Arizona Territory, was founded in which year?
1885
The 1885 territorial legislature gave Tucson the university with a $25,000 allocation; the city had hoped for the mental hospital, which came with $100,000.
Q 08Arizona became the Wildcats after a 1914 football loss to which California college?
Occidental College
After Arizona's hard-fought 1914 loss to Occidental College in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times wrote that the Arizona men 'showed the fight of wildcats'.
Q 09Which Arizona Wildcats motto comes from the last message of quarterback John 'Button' Salmon, who died in 1926?
Bear Down
Bear Down: after a car crash, Salmon, who was also student body president, asked coach Pop McKale to 'tell the team to bear down', and the phrase became the university's slogan and fight song.
Q 10The University of Arizona's giant-telescope mirror lab is tucked beneath which campus structure?
Football stadium
The Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab sits under the east stands of Arizona Stadium, the football stadium, spin-casting honeycomb mirrors such as the 8.4-meter mirror for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
Q 11Which of Saguaro National Park's two units lies east of Tucson?
Rincon Mountain District
The Rincon Mountain District is the original 1933 monument; President Kennedy added the western Tucson Mountain District in 1961, and Congress joined the two as a national park in 1994.
Q 12Which outgoing president created Saguaro National Monument in March 1933, days before leaving office?
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover signed the proclamation on March 1, 1933, in his last week in office, after University of Arizona president Homer Shantz had pushed for years to protect the cactus forest.
Q 13Which of these does a saguaro, the cactus of Tucson's national park, usually grow last?
Arm
Q 21What was draining the oxygen that ran low inside Biosphere 2 during its sealed 1991–93 mission?
Soil microbes
Soil microbes were using the oxygen up as they broke down the over-rich soil, and the carbon dioxide they gave off was locked away by the building's concrete, so it never showed up in the air.
Q 22Which Tucson event, long held at the convention center, began in 1955 at an elementary school?
The Gem and Mineral Show
The Gem and Mineral Show began as a mineral society's exhibit in an elementary school, soon moved to a Quonset hut at the fairgrounds, and reached the convention center in 1973.
Q 23El Tour de Tucson, first held in 1983, is a mass-participation event for which activity?
Arm: a saguaro flowers and fruits for years before its first arm appears, usually at 50 to 100 years of age, and each arm lets it carry more flowers and fruit.
Q 14Mission San Xavier del Bac, about 10 miles south of downtown Tucson, is known by what nickname?
White Dove of the Desert
The 'White Dove of the Desert' takes its name from the gleaming white church that Franciscans completed in 1797, the oldest European structure in Arizona.
Q 15Which Jesuit missionary founded Mission San Xavier del Bac, south of Tucson?
Eusebio Kino
Eusebio Kino, a Jesuit explorer and mapmaker, chose the site in the 1690s, but the church seen today was finished by Franciscans in 1797, after Spain expelled the Jesuits in 1767.
Q 16Davis-Monthan Air Force Base is named after two Tucson men who died how?
In military air crashes
In military air crashes, separately: Samuel Davis died in 1921 and Oscar Monthan in 1924, both Army fliers from Tucson families, though Davis was born in Tennessee and Monthan in England.
Q 17Which famous aviator flew into Tucson in 1927 to dedicate Davis-Monthan airfield?
Charles Lindbergh
Charles Lindbergh stopped in Tucson on the 48-state tour he flew for the Guggenheim fund to promote aviation, months after his solo Atlantic crossing, and dedicated the city's new airfield.
Q 18A museum in Sahuarita, south of Tucson, preserves the last intact launch complex of which ICBM?
Titan II
Titan II complex 571-7 came off alert in 1982 and became a museum; its silo door is fixed half open, as an arms agreement required, so satellites could confirm the missile can't launch.
Q 19Kitt Peak National Observatory, west of Tucson, sits on land leased from which Native nation?
Tohono O'odham
The Tohono O'odham Nation leased the mountain for the observatory in 1958; in 2005 it sued to stop a new telescope array there, calling the peak sacred, and the National Science Foundation halted the work.
Q 20Biosphere 2, the giant sealed glass research facility north of Tucson, is located in which community?
Oracle
Oracle is home to the 3.14-acre glasshouse, built in the late 1980s to test whether people could live sealed off as in a space colony; the University of Arizona has owned it since 2011.
Road cycling
El Tour de Tucson is a road cycling ride that Richard DeBernardis started in 1983 with fewer than 200 riders; it has since drawn thousands each November and raises money for local charities.
Q 24Tucson schools close on a Thursday and Friday each February so families can attend which event?
The Tucson Rodeo
The Tucson Rodeo, La Fiesta de los Vaqueros, dates to 1925; schools shut so families can watch its parade of horses and wagons, billed as the nation's largest non-motorized parade.
Q 25Sun Link, opened in 2014, is what kind of Tucson transit line?
Streetcar
A streetcar: Sun Link returned regular service to a city whose last electric streetcars gave way to buses on December 31, 1930.
Q 26In 2015 UNESCO named Tucson the first US City of what?
Gastronomy
City of Gastronomy: UNESCO pointed to the longest agricultural history of any US city, with food crops grown in the Tucson valley for some 4,000 years.
Q 27A Sonoran hot dog, a Tucson street-food staple, is wrapped in what before it hits the grill?
Bacon
Bacon wraps the frank, which is grilled and tucked into a soft bolillo-style bun under beans, onions and tomatoes; the style came north from Hermosillo, Sonora, sold from street carts by vendors called dogueros.
Q 28Monica Flin of which Tucson restaurant is credited with accidentally inventing the chimichanga?
El Charro Café
At El Charro Café, Flin reportedly began to swear with a word starting 'chi-' but, with children nearby, switched to 'chimichanga', Spanish for thingamajig.
Q 29Which Tucson restaurant won a 2018 James Beard America's Classics award for its Sonoran hot dogs?
El Güero Canelo
El Güero Canelo began in 1993 as a food cart run by Sonora native Daniel Contreras and grew into full restaurants before the James Beard Foundation named it an America's Classic in 2018.
Q 30A 1934 fire at Tucson's Hotel Congress led to the capture of which bank robber's gang?
John Dillinger
John Dillinger and his gang were hiding at the hotel under aliases; firemen who carried out their luggage identified them, and police arrested the gang in Tucson on January 25, 1934.