US Travel Trivia
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7correct to beat the crowd
This US travel trivia quiz has 68 free questions with answers for anyone who loves seeing America: road-trippers, frequent flyers, national park collectors and people planning their first big trip. It covers how the country is actually travelled: the world's busiest airport, the longest Amtrak route, the longest Interstate and the longest road, where Route 66 really ended, which theme park draws the most people on Earth, and why the Las Vegas Strip is not technically in Las Vegas. The easy questions ask which island Waikiki is on and who gave America the Statue of Liberty. The harder ones get into the details travellers argue about at rest stops: what ORD stands for, which tribe owns the Grand Canyon Skywalk, how many time zones the US really has, which state capital you cannot drive to, and the one Smithsonian museum that charges admission. Along the way you will pass Wall Drug, Cadillac Ranch, the Corn Palace and the world's largest ball of twine. Every answer has been checked against a reference page and each question shows its source once you answer, so it works for a road-trip car game, a travel-club quiz night or settling a bet about the deepest lake in the country.
30 of 68 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which US airport became the world's busiest by passenger numbers in 1998?
Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson
Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson led every year from 1998 until 2020, when the pandemic cut its traffic, and took the title back in 2021; in 2015 it became the first airport to handle 100 million passengers in a year.
Q 02Which national park, with over 11 million visits in 2025, is America's most visited?
Great Smoky Mountains
Great Smoky Mountains National Park, on the Tennessee–North Carolina border, is named for the mist that rises like smoke from its slopes, and it draws more than twice as many visits as the Grand Canyon.
Q 03Which 1872 park was the first US national park and widely considered the first in the world?
Yellowstone
Yellowstone was set aside by Congress in an act Ulysses S. Grant signed on 1 March 1872, though some argue that Mongolia's Bogd Khan Mountain, protected as early as 1778, was the first such park.
Q 04Three days a week, Amtrak's Texas Eagle continues beyond San Antonio to which city, forming America's longest rail route?
Los Angeles
Los Angeles is reached by coupling the Texas Eagle's through cars to the Sunset Limited at San Antonio, which turns a Chicago-to-Texas train into a run across El Paso and Tucson to the Pacific.
Q 05Which president signed the law creating Amtrak to take over America's loss-making passenger trains?
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon signed the Rail Passenger Service Act in October 1970; the law set Amtrak up as a for-profit corporation, yet it went on relying on federal subsidies for decades to cover its losses.
Q 06Interstate 90, the longest Interstate highway, runs from Boston to which West Coast city?
Seattle
Seattle is I-90's western end; the route's last stoplight stood in Wallace, Idaho, which had its downtown listed as historic to keep the freeway out, until a viaduct carried I-90 past the town in 1991.
Q 07Historic Route 66 ran from Chicago to which California city?
Santa Monica
Santa Monica became the highway's western end in 1936; John Steinbeck named it the Mother Road in The Grapes of Wrath, his 1939 novel of Dust Bowl families driving it west to California.
Q 08Who first recorded '(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66' in 1946?
Nat King Cole
Nat King Cole and his trio first recorded Bobby Troup's song in 1946; the highway itself was formally decommissioned in 1985, after the interstates had bypassed the last of it.
Q 09Which Florida park was the world's most visited theme park in 2024?
Magic Kingdom
Magic Kingdom drew about 17.8 million visitors in 2024; its streets are really the second storey, because Florida's high water table meant the staff tunnels were built at ground level and the park on top.
Q 10Most of the Las Vegas Strip lies in which unincorporated town, not the city itself?
Paradise
Paradise was created in 1950 at the urging of casino owners, after the mayor of Las Vegas tried to annex the Strip to widen the city's tax base; town status blocked the move.
Q 11Which Michigan island resort bans nearly all motor vehicles?
Mackinac
Mackinac Island banned cars in 1898 after carriage drivers complained that automobiles startled their horses, and the 8-mile road around its shore is the only US state highway closed to motor vehicles.
Q 12Which 469-mile scenic road runs along the Appalachian crest through Virginia and North Carolina?
Blue Ridge Parkway
The Blue Ridge Parkway took 52 years to finish: work began in 1935 as a Depression-era public works project, and the last gap, the Linn Cove Viaduct around Grandfather Mountain, was dedicated in 1987.
Q 13Key West, the southernmost city in the contiguous US, lies roughly 95 miles north of which country?
Cuba
Q 21Which freestanding arch near Moab, Utah, appears on the state's license plates?
Delicate Arch
Delicate Arch owes its name to a 1934 article that called it 'the most delicately chiseled arch in the entire area'; before that, locals knew it as Cowboy's Chaps and Old Maid's Bloomers.
Q 22Which lake is the deepest in the United States, at nearly 2,000 feet?
Crater Lake
Crater Lake fills the caldera left when Mount Mazama collapsed about 7,700 years ago; no rivers or streams feed it, so all of its water arrived as rain and snow.
Q 23Death Valley's record 134 °F in July 1913 was measured at which spot?
Furnace Creek
Cuba lies across the Straits of Florida, about 93 miles wide at their narrowest, which leaves Key West closer to Cuba than to Miami.
Q 14Which shopping complex, opened in 1992, stands on a demolished big-league stadium's site?
Mall of America
Mall of America stands in Bloomington, not Minneapolis, on the site of Metropolitan Stadium: the Twins and Vikings left for a downtown dome in the early 1980s, and the mall opened on the old field a decade later.
Q 15Which Finnish-American architect designed the 630-foot Gateway Arch in St. Louis?
Eero Saarinen
Eero Saarinen, son of the architect Eliel, won the 1948 design competition but never saw his arch rise: he died in 1961, two years before construction began.
Q 16Wall Drug in South Dakota built its 1930s fame by advertising what to travellers?
Free ice water
Ted Hustead's wife Dorothy suggested offering free ice water to hot travellers in 1936, and the roadside signs that followed turned Wall Drug into a famous stop.
Q 17Cadillac Ranch, ten Cadillacs buried nose-first, is near which Texas city?
Amarillo
Amarillo's Cadillac Ranch was planted in 1974 by the Ant Farm art collective as a tribute to the tail fin; visitors are welcome to spray-paint the cars, so no paint job lasts more than a few hours.
Q 18US Route 20, America's longest road, runs west from Boston to end in which state?
Oregon
Oregon is where US 20 ends, at the coastal town of Newport; it became America's longest road only in the 1960s, when California cut US 6, the previous record holder, back to Bishop.
Q 19Which airport's code, ORD, is a leftover from its 1940s name, Orchard Field?
Chicago O'Hare
Chicago O'Hare kept the code ORD when Orchard Field was renamed in 1949 for Edward 'Butch' O'Hare, the Navy's first flying ace of the Second World War and a Medal of Honor recipient.
Q 20Which landmark began as a doodle by the 1962 World's Fair's chief organiser?
Space Needle
The Space Needle started as a sketch by hotel executive Edward Carlson, inspired by a restaurant-topped broadcast tower he had seen in Stuttgart; its plot was secured only about a year before the fair opened.
Furnace Creek logged the world-record reading on 10 July 1913; oddly, the same weather station had also recorded Death Valley's coldest temperature, 15 °F, that January.
Q 24Which Florida city, founded by Spain in 1565, is the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the lower 48?
St. Augustine
St. Augustine was founded on 8 September 1565 by the Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, who named it for the saint on whose feast day he first sighted land, 42 years before the English reached Jamestown.
Q 25Mammoth Cave, the longest known cave system in the world, is in which state?
Kentucky
Kentucky's Mammoth Cave was opened up by Stephen Bishop, an enslaved guide who in 1838 became the first person to cross its Bottomless Pit and later drew a map of the passages beyond.
Q 26Going-to-the-Sun Road crosses the Continental Divide in which national park?
Glacier
Glacier National Park's 50-mile road tops out at Logan Pass, where snow lies so deep that ploughing it is a monumental job every spring and the full route opens only for the summer.
Q 27What marks the route of Boston's 2.5-mile Freedom Trail?
A red line
A red line, mostly brick, was a later addition: when the trail was dedicated in 1951, after a newspaper columnist urged the city to help tourists find its landmarks, only signs marked the way.
Q 28Who owns the Grand Canyon Skywalk, a glass walkway over the rim?
Hualapai Tribe
The Hualapai Tribe commissioned the Skywalk on its own land at the canyon's far western end, outside the national park and about a five-hour drive from the South Rim.
Q 29Which state capital has no roads to the rest of its state, so visitors come by air or ferry?
Juneau
Juneau is hemmed in by steep mountains topped by an icefield, terrain too rugged for a road out, so cars reach Alaska's capital only by ferry.
Q 30Hawaii shares its time zone with part of which Alaskan island chain?
Aleutian Islands
The Aleutian Islands' western end keeps Hawaii's standard time, yet the clocks match for only part of the year: the Aleutians move to daylight time, while Hawaii stays on standard time all year.