Wild West Trivia
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117 free Wild West trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
62 free Wild West trivia questions with answers. The Wild West of the movies is mostly invention, and the real thing is stranger. Wyatt Earp finished his days trying to sell his story in Hollywood, Bat Masterson died at his desk as a New York sportswriter, and the most famous stagecoach robber in California was afraid of horses and always ran off on foot. This quiz covers the outlaws and lawmen everyone has heard of, from Billy the Kid and Jesse James to Butch Cassidy and Doc Holliday, alongside the cattle trails, boomtowns, railroads and Native leaders that shaped the frontier: Deadwood, Dodge City, the Chisholm Trail, Sitting Bull, Geronimo and the Homestead Act. It starts with easy warm-ups and builds to genuinely hard questions about laundry marks, meridians and eight-hour buffalo-shooting contests. Every answer was checked against reference and primary sources rather than frontier legend, so it works for a saloon-themed party, a classroom, or settling arguments at pub trivia.
30 of 117 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Billy the Kid, alias William Bonney, was probably born under what name?
Henry McCarty
Henry McCarty was probably his birth name; Antrim came from the man who became his stepfather, and William H. Bonney was a name he gave himself.
Q 02Which sheriff shot and killed Billy the Kid at Fort Sumner in 1881?
Pat Garrett
Pat Garrett waited in the dark in Pete Maxwell's bedroom at Fort Sumner on 14 July 1881 and shot the Kid as he walked in.
Q 03Billy the Kid rose to fame as one of the Regulators in which New Mexico conflict?
Lincoln County War
The Lincoln County War (1878) pitted the Regulators, formed to avenge the murder of English rancher John Tunstall, against the Murphy-Dolan faction.
Q 04The only authenticated photograph of Billy the Kid led people to believe he was what?
Left-handed
Left-handed: tintypes are mirror images, so his holster shows on the wrong hip, and a 1958 film was even titled The Left Handed Gun; the plate sold for $2.3 million in 2011.
Q 05Where did the 1881 Gunfight at the O.K. Corral actually take place?
A vacant lot
A vacant lot on Fremont Street was the real site, not the corral itself; the Earps and Doc Holliday faced murder charges afterwards, but a judge ruled the killings justified.
Q 06About how long did the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral last?
30 seconds
30 seconds: some thirty shots were fired, leaving Billy Clanton and both McLaury brothers dead, while Ike Clanton ran for it.
Q 07The outlaw faction the Earps fought at the O.K. Corral is known today by what name?
The Cochise County Cowboys
The Cochise County Cowboys were a loose band of rustlers and smugglers; the shoot-out began when the town marshal tried to disarm them under a local ban on carrying guns.
Q 08Wyatt gets the fame, but which Earp brother was city marshal and led the lawmen at the O.K. Corral?
Virgil
Virgil Earp was both city marshal and a deputy US marshal; two months after the fight, gunmen ambushed him and shattered his left arm, maiming him for life.
Q 09Before becoming a gambler and gunman, Doc Holliday earned a degree in what?
Dentistry
Dentistry was his trade: he graduated from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery in 1872, but tuberculosis soon sent him west in search of drier air, where he turned to gambling.
Q 10Doc Holliday died in his bed at a hotel in which Colorado spa town?
Glenwood Springs
Glenwood Springs drew Doc Holliday in 1887 because he hoped its hot springs would ease his tuberculosis. He died in bed at the Hotel Glenwood that November, aged 36, reportedly amused to find his boots off.
Q 11Wyatt Earp was accused of fixing an 1896 contest he officiated in which sport?
Boxing
Boxing: as referee of the Fitzsimmons–Sharkey heavyweight fight in San Francisco, Earp gave it to Sharkey on a foul few had seen. He had also climbed into the ring wearing a revolver, and was charged for it.
Q 12What is unusual about Wyatt Earp's record across all his gunfights?
He was never wounded
His brothers and his friend Doc Holliday were all hit; Wyatt walked away untouched every time.
Q 13Wild Bill Hickok was shot in 1876 while playing poker in which town?
Deadwood
Deadwood's Saloon No. 10 was where Hickok broke his own rule: he liked to sit with his back to the wall, but the only free chair faced away from the door, and Jack McCall walked up behind him and fired.
Q 21What killed the Pony Express after only about a year and a half?
The telegraph
The telegraph reached across the continent on 24 October 1861, and the Pony Express, which had never made money, was wound up within weeks.
Q 22Buffalo Bill Cody launched his famous Wild West show in which year?
1883
Buffalo Bill's Wild West opened in Omaha, Nebraska in May 1883; from 1887 it toured Europe, where Queen Victoria saw it in her Jubilee year.
Q 23Buffalo Bill Cody earned his nickname in the 1860s by hunting meat for crews building what?
A railroad
A railroad: in 1867 the Kansas Pacific hired Cody to keep its construction crews in buffalo meat, and the thousands of animals he shot in the next year and a half gave him the name.
Q 14The 'dead man's hand' Hickok supposedly held when he died is traditionally what?
Black aces and eights
Black aces and eights are the hand of legend, but no account from 1876 records Hickok's cards. The link took hold fifty years later, through a 1926 biography.
Q 15What did Davis Tutt take from Hickok, sparking their 1865 Springfield duel?
A gold watch
A gold watch was the trigger: Tutt seized Hickok's pocket watch over a gambling debt and wore it in public, and their shootout in Springfield's town square followed on 21 July 1865.
Q 16Which Kansas cattle town made Wild Bill Hickok its marshal in 1871?
Abilene
Abilene made him marshal in April 1871. That October he shot a gambler in a street shootout, then killed his own deputy by mistake, and the town dismissed him.
Q 17Who shot Jesse James in the back of the head in 1882?
Robert Ford
Robert Ford, a gang member after the reward, shot James from behind in the outlaw's own home in St. Joseph on 3 April 1882. James's gravestone called his killer a traitor and coward not worth naming.
Q 18The James-Younger Gang fell apart after a botched 1876 bank raid in which Minnesota town?
Northfield
At Northfield on 7 September 1876, townspeople shot back at the gang; the Younger brothers were captured two weeks later near Madelia.
Q 19Jesse and Frank James learned guerrilla warfare riding with which Confederate bushwhacker leaders?
William Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson
William Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson led Missouri's fiercest guerrillas: Frank rode with Quantrill, and Jesse joined Anderson at 16, the year his men dragged unarmed Union soldiers off a train at Centralia and shot them.
Q 20The Pony Express carried mail between St. Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento in about how many days?
10
10 days was the scheduled time, kept by changing to a fresh horse at relay stations set every 10 to 15 miles along the route.
Q 24Annie Oakley's real first name was what?
Phoebe
Phoebe Ann, as she was born in rural Ohio, shot game for market as a girl to support her widowed mother, and by 15 her earnings had paid off the mortgage on the family home.
Q 25Sitting Bull, her fellow performer, gave five-foot-tall Annie Oakley which nickname?
Little Sure Shot
Little Sure Shot was Sitting Bull's name for her, Watanya Cicilla in Lakota: after watching her shoot in St. Paul in 1884, he symbolically adopted her as a daughter.
Q 26Calamity Jane's real name was Martha Jane what?
Canary
Canary was her family name, sometimes spelled Cannary. She lies beside Wild Bill Hickok: by one account at her own request, by another as the funeral planners' joke on a man who had no use for her.
Q 27Butch Cassidy's real name was what?
Robert LeRoy Parker
Robert LeRoy Parker, born in Utah in 1866, took 'Butch' from a spell working for a butcher in Rock Springs and 'Cassidy' from Mike Cassidy, the rustler who taught him the trade.
Q 28Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are believed to have died in a 1908 shootout in which country?
Bolivia
Bolivia is where two American bandits died in a shootout at San Vicente days after a mine payroll robbery. A 1991 dig there found no remains whose DNA matched the outlaws' relatives, so their end is unproven.
Q 29The Sundance Kid took his nickname from a town in which state?
Wyoming
Wyoming: in 1887 he took a horse, saddle and gun from a ranch near the town of Sundance, was soon caught, and picked up the nickname during his 18 months in jail.
Q 30The Colt Single Action Army revolver, adopted by the U.S. Army in 1873, is famous under what nickname?
Peacemaker
Peacemaker was the name that stuck to the Army's standard revolver of 1873 to 1892. Samuel Colt never saw his company's most famous gun: he had died in 1862.