Utah Trivia
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149 free Utah trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
52 free Utah trivia questions with answers. Utah packs a lot into one state: the saltiest lake in the hemisphere, five national parks, the spot where the transcontinental railroad met, two Winter Olympics and a state snack that is a wobbly green dessert. This quiz covers all of it. There are questions on history (the pioneers of 1847, Brigham Young, the 1890 Manifesto and statehood in 1896), geography (Kings Peak, the Bonneville Salt Flats, the Uintas, Monument Valley) and the Mighty 5 (Arches, Bryce, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef and Zion). The culture rounds take in the Utah Jazz, Sundance, fry sauce, Philo Farnsworth's television, the Dutch oven and the state firearm. Early questions suit anyone who has driven I-15; the later ones ask which president appointed the first territorial governor and how wide Salt Lake City's streets were meant to be. Good for a classroom, a road trip or a Pioneer Day gathering. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 149 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Utah's statehood was held up for decades by Congress's objection to which practice?
Polygamy
Polygamy was renounced by the church's 1890 Manifesto, yet Congress still made Utah write a ban into its constitution before admitting it as the 45th state in 1896.
Q 02Utah's state nickname refers to what?
A beehive
A beehive stands for industry, the state motto; the settlers called their land Deseret, a word their scripture gives for honeybee, and the hive still sits on the state flag.
Q 03Seeing the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, Brigham Young is said to have declared what?
This is the place
'This is the place' is short for 'This is the right place, drive on', a line Wilford Woodruff first attributed to him more than thirty years later; a monument in Salt Lake City marks the spot.
Q 04At which Utah location was the first transcontinental railroad completed in 1869?
Promontory Summit
Promontory Summit saw the ceremonial swing miss the last spike, but the single word 'done' was wired across the country anyway.
Q 05Which university has held the transcontinental railroad's golden spike since the 1890s?
Stanford
Stanford University's museum was given it by David Hewes, the San Francisco contractor who dreamed up the golden spike and had it cast from his own gold.
Q 06What is the highest point in Utah?
Kings Peak
Kings Peak has no road anywhere near it, so the usual route from the Henrys Fork trailhead is a round trip of some 28 miles on foot.
Q 07Utah is one of the Four Corners states, along with Arizona, New Mexico and which other state?
Colorado
Colorado's corner sits about 1,800 feet from where Congress intended, yet the marker stands: once the states accepted the survey, its monuments became the legal border.
Q 08The name Utah comes from the name of which Native American people?
The Ute
The Ute name reached English through the Spanish 'Yuta'; Congress chose it for the new territory in 1850 over Deseret, the name the settlers had asked for.
Q 09Which coast-to-coast link was completed in Salt Lake City in October 1861, killing off the Pony Express within days?
The transcontinental telegraph
The transcontinental telegraph was joined in Salt Lake City on 24 October 1861, and Brigham Young sent one of the first messages; the Pony Express announced its closure two days later.
Q 10What is the state bird of Utah?
California gull
The California gull got the honour because, as the story goes, flocks of gulls ate the crickets devouring the settlers' crops in 1848; a monument in Salt Lake City thanks them.
Q 11What is Utah's state flower?
Sego lily
The sego lily was chosen in 1911 because its bulbs, which Native people taught the settlers to eat, had helped feed them through their hungry first years.
Q 12Which Utah–Arizona reservoir is named for the one-armed explorer who led an 1869 boat expedition through its canyons?
Lake Powell
Lake Powell honours John Wesley Powell, who had lost his right arm at the Battle of Shiloh and still led a three-month river journey in small wooden boats.
Q 13Which Zion National Park trail ends along a narrow rock spine with chains to grip and sheer drops on both sides?
Angels Landing
Angels Landing drew such crowds onto its chain-lined final half-mile that since 2022 hikers have needed a permit, handed out by lottery.
Q 21Balanced Rock, the Windows and the Fiery Furnace are sights in which Utah national park?
Arches
Arches has over 2,000 documented stone arches, the densest concentration in the world, because a buried salt layer bulged upward and cracked the sandstone above it into thin walls.
Q 22Which Utah desert town, famed for its Slickrock mountain-bike trail, is the gateway to two national parks?
Moab
Moab was once a farm town, then a mining town, and now lives on park visitors, mountain bikers and the off-roaders of its annual Jeep Safari.
Q 23Bryce Canyon's namesake Ebenezer Bryce supposedly called it 'a helluva place to' do what?
Lose a cow
'A helluva place to lose a cow' is the line tradition gives the homesteader, who grazed cattle there in the 1870s; the 'canyon' is really a row of amphitheatres eaten into a plateau's edge.
Q 14Which slogan has sold Utah's skiing on the state's licence plates since 1985?
The Greatest Snow on Earth
The Greatest Snow on Earth so irked the Ringling Bros. circus, owner of 'The Greatest Show on Earth', that it sued Utah in the 1990s for diluting its trademark, and lost.
Q 15Salt Lake City's street addresses all count outward from a corner of which landmark?
Temple Square
Temple Square's south-eastern corner is the zero point of the grid, so every address in the valley is simply a count of blocks from that one corner.
Q 16Utah's highest temperatures on record have been measured in or near which city?
St. George
St. George lies in the low south-west corner where the Mojave Desert reaches Utah; the state's record low, minus 69 °F, came from Peter Sinks, a mountain basin far to the north.
Q 17Which metal set off a 1950s prospecting rush in south-eastern Utah after Charlie Steen struck it rich?
Uranium
Uranium was what the atomic age wanted; Steen, an out-of-work geologist, named his 1952 strike Mi Vida, 'my life', and made millions from it.
Q 18Brine shrimp eggs harvested from the Great Salt Lake are mostly sold as what?
Fish-farm feed
Fish-farm feed: the dormant eggs keep for years, so prawn and fish hatcheries in Asia and South America hatch them on demand as live food for their young.
Q 19Utah's great inland sea is the remnant of which giant prehistoric lake?
Bonneville
Lake Bonneville overtopped Red Rock Pass in Idaho and sent a catastrophic flood down the Snake River; what was left shrank away later as the climate grew warmer and drier.
Q 20What is the largest island in the Great Salt Lake, now a state park with a bison herd?
Antelope
Antelope Island was named by John C. Frémont and Kit Carson, who hunted pronghorn there in 1845; the bison it is now known for were only brought over in 1893.
Q 24What was Zion National Park called when it was first protected as a national monument in 1909?
Mukuntuweap
Mukuntuweap lasted only nine years: in 1918 the Park Service renamed the monument Zion, the name Mormon settlers used, and Congress made it a national park the following year.
Q 25Which river carved Zion Canyon?
The Virgin
The Virgin River still fills the canyon wall to wall in the Narrows, a gorge at times only 20 to 30 feet wide, so hikers there walk upstream in the river itself.
Q 26Which two rivers meet inside Canyonlands National Park, dividing it into districts?
The Colorado and the Green
The Colorado and the Green are both calm above their meeting point, the Confluence; below it their combined flow crashes through the whitewater of Cataract Canyon.
Q 27Capitol Reef National Park is built around which nearly 100-mile geological feature?
The Waterpocket Fold
The Waterpocket Fold, a warp in the Earth's crust, has cliffs that blocked travellers like a reef at sea, giving the park half its name; the other half comes from white sandstone domes that recalled the US Capitol.
Q 28Which Briton first topped 300 mph on land, on Utah's salt flats in 1935?
Malcolm Campbell
Malcolm Campbell had set five records on the sand at Daytona Beach before he tried Utah's salt, where he averaged 301 mph over two runs; it was his last land speed record.
Q 29Which fast-food chain's first franchise opened in South Salt Lake, Utah, in 1952?
KFC
KFC began as a dish on the menu of Pete Harman's restaurant after his friend Harland Sanders shared the recipe; Harman later came up with the chain's cardboard bucket.
Q 30Which golden figure tops the Salt Lake Temple's tallest spire?
The angel Moroni
The angel Moroni, a hammered-metal figure covered in gold leaf, was sculpted by Cyrus Dallin; a 2020 earthquake shook the trumpet out of its hand.