Wyoming Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
97 free Wyoming trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
60 free Wyoming trivia questions with answers. Wyoming has the fewest people of any state and more than its share of firsts: the first national park, the first national monument, the first women voters, jurors and governor. This quiz covers the Cowboy State in 97 questions, from Old Faithful and the Grand Teton to the Oregon Trail, Fort Laramie, the Johnson County War, Butch Cassidy's prison stretch and the Teapot Dome scandal. You will also get the things locals argue about: why Casper is misspelled, which tribes share the Wind River Reservation, where the coal comes from, what the bucking horse on the licence plate is called, and where Brokeback Mountain was really filmed. The early questions suit anyone who has driven through on I-80; the later ones will only be answered by people who know their trona from their bentonite. Every answer has been checked against a documented source and each question shows its citation and a short explanation after you answer.
30 of 97 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Roughly how many people live in Cheyenne, Wyoming's capital and most populous city?
65,000
About 65,000 people lived in Cheyenne at the 2020 census, some 6,000 more than Casper; the city dates from July 1867, when a railroad's chief engineer picked a townsite beside Crow Creek.
Q 02Wyoming became a state in July 1890, a week after which neighbour?
Idaho
Idaho was admitted on 3 July 1890 and Wyoming followed on 10 July as the 44th state; Utah, next door, had to wait until 1896, after it agreed to outlaw polygamy.
Q 03Wyoming ranks where among the US states by population?
Last
Last: Wyoming has fewer people than Vermont or Alaska, yet it is the tenth-largest state by area, which leaves only about six people per square mile.
Q 04Wyoming's official nickname, the Equality State, comes from what 1869 decision?
Giving women the vote
Giving women the vote came first in Wyoming Territory: Governor John Campbell signed the suffrage act on 10 December 1869, and within months women were also serving on juries in Albany County.
Q 05Who became the first woman to serve as governor of a US state, taking office in Wyoming in January 1925?
Nellie Tayloe Ross
Nellie Tayloe Ross won a special election after her husband William died in office, took the oath on 5 January 1925, and later directed the US Mint for 20 years.
Q 06Esther Hobart Morris became the first American woman to hold what office in 1870?
Justice of the peace
Justice of the peace in a Wyoming gold-mining district from February 1870, Esther Hobart Morris served for nearly nine months; the state later chose her as one of its two statues in the US Capitol.
Q 07Which president signed the 1872 act creating Yellowstone?
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant signed the act on 1 March 1872, but Congress voted no money to run the park, so its first superintendent served five years without a salary and rarely set foot in it.
Q 08Which state holds only 3 percent of Yellowstone but three of its five entrances?
Montana
Montana has only about 3 percent of the park, yet the road from its north entrance at Gardiner is the only one kept open to ordinary cars all winter; Wyoming holds 96 percent.
Q 09What lies beneath Yellowstone and heats its 500-plus geysers?
A supervolcano
A supervolcano sits under the park: magma close to the surface heats groundwater until it bursts out, which is why more than half of the world's geysers are packed into this one corner of Wyoming.
Q 10Old Faithful, Yellowstone's most famous geyser, erupts roughly how often?
Every hour or two
Every hour or two is right, and the faithful geyser is slowing: the average wait was about 66 minutes in 1939, and by January 2025 the median had stretched to 102.
Q 11Who ran Yellowstone for about three decades from 1886, before park rangers existed?
The US Army
The US Army took over in 1886 because civilian superintendents could not stop poachers and vandals; cavalry troops patrolled from Fort Yellowstone until the new National Park Service was ready to replace them.
Q 12Devils Tower became the first US national monument in 1906 under which president?
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed Devils Tower the first national monument on 24 September 1906, three months after signing the Antiquities Act, which lets a president protect a landmark without waiting for Congress.
Q 13Which 1977 film used Devils Tower as the setting for its climactic scenes?
Q 21Which animal is Wyoming's official state mammal?
American bison
The American bison, which wears the state seal like a brand on Wyoming's flag, became the official mammal in 1985; by 1902 poachers had cut Yellowstone's wild herd to about two dozen animals.
Q 22Which dinosaur is Wyoming's official state dinosaur?
Triceratops
Triceratops became the state dinosaur in 1994; fossil hunter John Bell Hatcher dug the first skull out of Wyoming's Lance Formation in 1888 and hauled out another 31 over the next three years.
Q 23The University of Wyoming's athletic teams go by which name?
Cowboys and Cowgirls
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Close Encounters of the Third Kind made Devils Tower the landing site for its alien mothership; Steven Spielberg filmed at the monument, and his hero is so haunted by its shape that he sculpts it in his living room.
Q 14Which Wind River Range summit narrowly beats the Grand Teton as Wyoming's highest mountain?
Gannett Peak
Gannett Peak is higher by only a few dozen feet, but unlike the Grand Teton it stands deep inside roadless wilderness; its north slope carries the largest single glacier in the American Rockies.
Q 15Which philanthropist secretly bought about 35,000 acres of Jackson Hole through a front company to give to the public?
John D. Rockefeller Jr.
John D. Rockefeller Jr. hid behind the Snake River Land Company so that sellers would not learn who was buying; local ranchers then fought the plan for 15 years before the land finally passed to the government in 1949.
Q 16To fur trappers, what was a 'hole', as in Jackson Hole?
A mountain valley
A mountain valley was a 'hole' to the trappers; this one, between the Teton and Gros Ventre ranges, took the name of David Jackson, who trapped beaver there in the late 1820s.
Q 17Which Federal Reserve bank, whose district includes Wyoming, hosts the annual August symposium at Jackson Hole?
Kansas City
The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City brings central bankers to Jackson Lake Lodge each August, and Fed chairs have used their speeches there to signal shifts in policy.
Q 18The arches on Jackson's town square are built from what?
Elk antlers
Elk antlers, shed each spring by the thousands of elk that winter on the neighbouring refuge; local Boy Scouts gather them every year for an auction, and most of the proceeds go back to the refuge.
Q 19Cheyenne Frontier Days volunteers serve more than 100,000 free what?
Pancakes
Pancakes: the free breakfasts date from 1952, and Kiwanis volunteers now flip more than 100,000 over three mornings on military cooking ranges at the celebration billed as the Daddy of 'em All.
Q 20Wyoming's official state sport is what?
Rodeo
Rodeo, which grew out of the contests ranch hands held to show off working skills such as roping and bronc riding, became Wyoming's official state sport in 2003.
Cowboys and Cowgirls: the name is said to go back to 1891, when a working cowboy turned out to help the university's football team; home games are now played above 7,200 feet, the highest stadium in top-division college football.
Q 24Wyoming takes its name from a valley on the Susquehanna River in which eastern state?
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley was made famous by the poem 'Gertrude of Wyoming', and in 1865 Ohio congressman James Ashley proposed its name for a new territory some 1,500 miles to the west.
Q 25Which two other states, like Wyoming, are bordered entirely by straight lines?
Colorado and Utah
Colorado and Utah are the other two; on a map Wyoming looks like a rectangle, but the meridians converge, so its north edge is slightly shorter than its south.
Q 26Which state borders Wyoming on the east, along with South Dakota?
Nebraska
Nebraska shares Wyoming's eastern edge with South Dakota; the North Platte River crosses that border, and Oregon Trail wagons followed it upstream into Wyoming.
Q 27Wyoming's official state coin is a golden dollar showing which figure, who may be buried on the Wind River Reservation?
Sacagawea
Sacagawea is on the golden dollar Wyoming adopted as its state coin in 2004; a grave on the reservation bears her name, though a fur-trade clerk's journal records her death in 1812, far away on the Missouri River.
Q 28A Wyoming licence plate's first number identifies what?
County
County: Wyoming has 23 counties and each has its own plate prefix, so locals can tell at a glance which part of the state a car comes from.
Q 29Wyoming produces more of which fuel than any other state, mostly from the Powder River Basin?
Coal
Coal: Wyoming has led the nation every year since 1986, mining about two-fifths of US output in the 2010s; demand boomed in the 1970s, when clean-air rules made its low-sulphur seams the fuel power plants wanted.
Q 30Trona mined in southwestern Wyoming is turned into soda ash, a key ingredient in making what?
Glass
Glass, from windows to bottles, is made by melting soda ash with sand and lime; Wyoming's trona beds, the largest known deposit on Earth, were left behind when an ancient lake dried up.