145 Fun Facts About US State Capitals

What is the capital of California?

Sacramento won the job in 1854, after the legislature had drifted from San Jose to Vallejo to Benicia; the Gold Rush town already had more than 10,000 people.

What is the capital of New York?

Albany became the permanent capital in 1797, ending two decades in which the legislature had moved between Kingston, Poughkeepsie, New York City and Albany itself.

What is the capital of Texas?

Austin began as the riverside village of Waterloo; Mirabeau B. Lamar, who had hunted buffalo there, had it chosen as the Republic of Texas's capital in 1839 and renamed for Stephen F. Austin.

What is the capital of Florida?

Tallahassee became Florida's capital in 1824 as a compromise, sitting roughly midway between the two earlier capitals, St. Augustine and Pensacola.

What is the capital of Illinois?

The legislature voted in 1837 to move Illinois's capital from Vandalia to Springfield, a campaign led by a young lawmaker named Abraham Lincoln, who lived there until he left for the White House.

Which city was Georgia's capital throughout the Civil War?

Milledgeville was laid out as a purpose-built capital and named for Governor John Milledge; Georgia's convention voted to secede there in January 1861, to bonfires on Statehouse Square.

What is the capital of Ohio?

Columbus has been the capital of Ohio since 1816. The city was founded in 1812 specifically to serve as the state capital and was named after explorer Christopher Columbus.

What is the capital of Pennsylvania?

Harrisburg was a small river town when lawmakers picked it in 1812, partly for its strategic spot where pioneers heading west left the Susquehanna for the overland trail.

Juneau is the capital of which US state?

Alaska's government moved from Sitka to Juneau in 1906: gold found there in 1880 had built a busy mining town, while Sitka faded with the fur and whaling trades.

Which US state capital was the first Confederate capital, before the government moved north in May 1861?

Jefferson Davis was sworn in as Confederate president on the steps of Alabama's State Capitol in February 1861; the government stayed in Montgomery only three months before relocating.

Which US state capital was named for a nearby mountain range?

Olympia, Washington took its name in 1850 at Isaac Ebey's suggestion, for the town's view of the Olympic Mountains to the northwest, a range itself named for Greece's Mount Olympus.

What is the capital of Colorado?

Denver was named in 1858 by a land speculator hoping to win favour with James W. Denver, governor of Kansas Territory, which then stretched as far as the Rockies.

What is the capital of Michigan?

Lansing was a patch of wilderness with fewer than 20 settlers when lawmakers, unable to agree on any established city, moved the capital there from Detroit in 1847.

Which US state capital has the fewest residents?

Montpelier had only 8,074 residents at the 2020 census; it has fought off bids by bigger Burlington to take the capital, notably after fire gutted the State House in 1857.

What is the capital of Louisiana?

Baton Rouge is French for 'red stick': early French explorers found a red cypress post there marking the boundary between the lands of the Houma and the Bayougoula.

What is the capital of Minnesota?

Saint Paul and neighbouring Minneapolis form the Twin Cities; the settlement took its name in 1841 from a small log chapel that Father Lucien Galtier built on the bluff above the river landing.

What is the capital of Arizona?

Phoenix is said to have been named for the mythical bird because settlers in the late 1860s rebuilt the canals of a vanished people, raising a town from ruins; by the 2020 census it was the most populous state capital.

What is the capital of Massachusetts?

Boston's Puritan founders first settled across the water at Charlestown, then moved to the Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 after its lone English resident offered to share his fresh spring.

What is the capital of Nevada?

Carson City was ready before Nevada existed: founder Abraham Curry had set aside a 10-acre plot for a capitol by the time it became the territorial capital in 1861; the name honours scout Kit Carson.

What is the capital of Missouri?

Jefferson City has been Missouri's capital since 1826; it was named for Thomas Jefferson, whose Louisiana Purchase brought the territory into the United States.

Which US state capital was named after the seventh president of the United States?

The city honoured Andrew Jackson for his 1815 victory at New Orleans, years before he reached the White House; Madison, Lincoln and Jefferson City honour presidents four, sixteen and three.

Which state capital sits on the banks of the Cumberland River?

Nashville began on the Cumberland River's bluffs, where James Robertson's settlers arrived on Christmas Day 1779 and built the stockade later called Fort Nashborough.

Montpelier is the capital of which US state?

Vermont's capital was named by its first settler, Colonel Jacob Davis, after the French city of Montpellier, when France's help in the Revolution had made all things French fashionable.

What is the capital of Kentucky?

Frankfort is said to take its name from 'Frank's Ford', a Kentucky River crossing where pioneer Stephen Frank was killed in a skirmish; it was chosen as capital when Kentucky became a state in 1792.

What is the capital of South Carolina?

Columbia was created in 1786 because upcountry settlers wanted a capital more central than far-off Charleston; it was laid out as a planned city on a two-mile-square grid.

What is the capital of New Jersey?

Trenton has been the capital of New Jersey since 1790. It played a pivotal role in the American Revolution when George Washington famously crossed the Delaware River to attack Hessian forces there on Christmas night, 1776.

What is the capital of Connecticut?

Hartford has been the sole capital of Connecticut since 1875. Before that, Connecticut had two co-capitals: Hartford and New Haven, with the legislature alternating between the two cities.

What is the capital of Maryland?

Annapolis has been Maryland's capital since 1694 and was briefly the nation's: Congress met in its State House in 1783–84, and George Washington resigned his army command there.

What is the capital of Wisconsin?

Madison was picked as Wisconsin's territorial capital in 1836, while only a paper plat, and kept the role at statehood in 1848; the city was named for James Madison, who had died that June.

Which state capital was settled in a single afternoon when the Land Run of 1889 opened?

Oklahoma City went from a railway stop to a tent town of about 10,000 people on 22 April 1889, after a noon signal opened the Unassigned Lands to anyone who could stake a claim.

Which US state capital was the site of a gold rush that began in 1848?

Sacramento was at the center of the California Gold Rush. Gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill in nearby Coloma in January 1848, and Sacramento became the supply hub for miners flooding into the region.

What is the capital of Maine?

Augusta was picked for its more central location, but lawmakers kept meeting elsewhere for years until Charles Bulfinch's granite State House was ready in 1832.

What is the capital of North Carolina?

Raleigh has been the capital of North Carolina since 1792. The city was specifically created to serve as the state capital, named after Sir Walter Raleigh, who sponsored the first English settlements in North Carolina.

Which US state capital stands on the Missouri River?

Pierre stands on the Missouri River's east bank; Oahe Dam, a few miles upstream, backs the river up into a lake 231 miles long that reaches North Dakota's capital.

Which state capital sits on the Kansas River?

Topeka has been Kansas's capital since statehood in 1861 and is where the Brown v. Board of Education case that ended school segregation began.

What is the capital of New Hampshire?

Concord got its name in 1765, when a bitter boundary dispute with the neighbouring town of Bow was finally settled; lawmakers made it their permanent home in 1808.

Which US state capital sits highest above sea level, well above the 'Mile High City'?

Santa Fe stands about 7,000 feet up at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains; Spanish colonists founded it in 1610, a decade before the Mayflower sailed, making it the oldest state capital too.

What is the capital of Virginia?

Richmond replaced Williamsburg during the Revolution to put Virginia's capital farther from British warships, yet British raiders under Benedict Arnold sacked it in January 1781.

Which river flows through Arizona's capital?

The Salt River watered the city from the start: its founders in the 1860s dug irrigation canals along routes first cut centuries earlier by the Hohokam people.

Which state capital cannot be reached by road from any other part of its state?

Juneau sits on the mainland, but steep mountains and the Juneau Icefield behind it block any road to the rest of the state, so people and goods arrive by air or by sea.

Which painter has a museum devoted to her work in New Mexico's capital?

Georgia O'Keeffe first travelled to New Mexico in 1929, came back to paint its desert almost every year, and moved there for good in 1949; the museum opened in 1997, eleven years after her death.

Which river separates Boston from Cambridge?

The Charles River between the two cities was a tidal estuary lined with mudflats until a dam finished in 1910 turned its lower basin into the freshwater lake that rowers use today.

Pierre is the capital of which US state?

Pierre has been South Dakota's capital since statehood in 1889, chosen over Huron and other rivals for its central location.

Which novelist was born in Minnesota's capital in 1896?

F. Scott Fitzgerald went back to his parents' house there in 1919 to rewrite This Side of Paradise; its success the next year persuaded Zelda Sayre, who had turned him down, to marry him.

Which US state capital was named after a German chancellor?

Bismarck was renamed in 1873 for Germany's chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, by Northern Pacific Railway officials who hoped the gesture would attract German settlers and investment.

What is the capital of Delaware?

Dover took over from New Castle in 1777 because it was more central and safer from British raiders on the Delaware River.

Which university's main campus is in Ohio's capital?

Ohio State University began as the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College, though its first faculty also taught ancient languages; 24 students enrolled on opening day in 1873, and the legislature gave it its present name in 1878.

What is the capital of Arkansas?

Little Rock is named for a small rock outcrop on the Arkansas River, a landmark that early river travellers told apart from the much larger bluff a little way upstream, the 'big rock'.

What is the capital of Hawaii?

Honolulu took over from Lahaina on Maui in 1845, when Kamehameha III moved his court to the harbour town as Oahu's trade grew.

What is the capital of Idaho?

Boise takes its name from the French for 'wooded'; in one telling, a French-speaking guide cried 'Les bois!' at his first sight of the tree-lined river.

Which state capital stages a 500-mile motor race every Memorial Day weekend?

Indianapolis has held the race since 1911 on an oval built two years earlier as a test track for local car makers; the track lies in Speedway, a separate town surrounded by the city.

What is the capital of Iowa?

Des Moines takes its name from its river, in French the Rivière des Moines; that reads as 'river of the monks', but it may really echo the Moingona, a people who lived along it.

What is the capital of Montana?

Helena grew rich on its 1864 gold rush; by 1888 the city counted roughly 50 millionaires among its residents.

What is the capital of Nebraska?

Lincoln was the village of Lancaster until 1867, when lawmakers moved the capital out of Omaha to a site south of the Platte and renamed it for the president assassinated two years earlier.

What is the capital of Oregon?

Salem briefly lost the capital to Corvallis in 1855, but lawmakers soon moved back, and an 1864 popular vote confirmed it as the seat of government.

What is the capital of Rhode Island?

Providence shared the job for generations: Rhode Island's lawmakers met in both it and Newport until around 1900, when Providence became the only capital.

What is the capital of Utah?

Salt Lake City was founded in 1847 by Brigham Young and a band of Mormon pioneers, who chose the remote valley as a refuge from the persecution they had met farther east.

What is the capital of West Virginia?

Charleston won the seat for good in an 1877 statewide vote, after years in which West Virginia's government had moved back and forth between it and a rival city.

What is the capital of Wyoming?

Cheyenne sprang up in 1867 where the Union Pacific Railroad crossed Crow Creek, and grew so fast that it was nicknamed the 'Magic City of the Plains'.

Which soft drink was first sold at a pharmacy soda fountain in Georgia's capital in 1886?

Coca-Cola was John Pemberton's answer to a local prohibition law passed that year: he took the wine out of his French Wine Coca tonic and sold the new syrup at five cents a glass.

Which US service academy has trained officers in Maryland's capital since 1845?

The Naval Academy was set up without any money from Congress on a 10-acre Army post, Fort Severn, by Navy Secretary George Bancroft, with 50 midshipmen and seven professors.

The Indy 500 is run in which enclave town inside Indiana's capital?

Speedway was laid out in 1912 as a residential suburb, three years after the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was built, and took its name from the track.

Utah's capital hosted which global sporting event in 2002 and was awarded it again for 2034?

The Winter Olympics were awarded for 2034 by an IOC vote in Paris in July 2024; the bid for the 2002 Games had ended in a bribery scandal that cost several IOC members their seats.

Idaho's capital has a downtown 'block' celebrating immigrants from which European region?

Basque Country: Basques who came to the American West, many of them to herd sheep, settled in Idaho in such numbers that its Basque community is one of the largest in the United States.

Who founded Rhode Island's capital in 1636?

Roger Williams, a minister banished from Massachusetts Bay for his 'dangerous opinions', slipped away in the winter of 1636 and founded the settlement on land bought from the Narragansett.

Which city was the first capital of the state of Ohio?

Chillicothe, on the Scioto River, was where Ohio's first constitution was written, and it served as capital twice, from statehood in 1803 until 1810 and again from 1812 to 1816.

Which city was West Virginia's first capital when the state joined the Union in 1863?

Wheeling hosted the conventions that split the state from Virginia and was West Virginia's capital twice, in 1863–70 and 1875–85, before losing the seat for good.

Which palace in Hawaii's capital was the official residence of the last two Hawaiian monarchs?

ʻIolani Palace, completed in 1882 for King Kalākaua, became a prison for his sister and successor: Queen Liliʻuokalani was held in an upstairs room for nearly eight months in 1895, after the monarchy's overthrow.

William Penn named Delaware's capital after a town in which English county?

Kent supplied two names at once: in 1683 Penn ordered a court town for a county he had already named Kent, and borrowed the town's name from the same corner of England.

Which author built a home in Connecticut's capital in 1874 and lived there until 1891?

Mark Twain published Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn while the house was his home; bad investments forced the family to leave for Europe in 1891.

Which university's main campus is in Florida's capital?

Florida State University spent four decades as a women's college, until the rush of veterans returning from the Second World War led lawmakers to make it coeducational again in 1947.

Whose 1955 arrest in Alabama's capital launched a year-long bus boycott?

Rosa Parks was arrested on 1 December 1955 for refusing to give up her bus seat; the boycott ran 381 days and ended after the Supreme Court's Browder v. Gayle ruling outlawed segregated buses.

Which state capital hosted the 1996 Summer Olympics?

Atlanta beat Athens, home of the first modern Games in 1896, for the right to stage the centenary Olympics; Muhammad Ali lit the cauldron at the opening ceremony.

Which river flows through the capital of Texas?

This Colorado River rises and ends inside Texas and is dammed to form Lady Bird Lake in the middle of the city; it shares only a name with the river that carved the Grand Canyon.

Which river flows past New York's state capital?

The Hudson River made the capital a gateway to the west in 1825, when the Erie Canal joined it there to complete a water route from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic.

Which river flows through Colorado's capital?

The South Platte River meets Cherry Creek at the spot where gold seekers staked out the city in 1858; Confluence Park now marks the junction.

Which river flows through Utah's capital?

The Jordan River runs from a freshwater lake to a salt one, which reminded Mormon settlers of the biblical Jordan flowing from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea.

Before its 1873 renaming, North Dakota's capital was called what?

Edwinton honoured Edwin Ferry Johnson, chief engineer of the Northern Pacific Railway, which renamed the town Bismarck in 1873 to court German investment.

How do locals pronounce Pierre, the name of a US state capital?

Locals say 'Peer', rhyming with 'beer', despite the French spelling; the name comes from Fort Pierre across the river, a fur-trading post named for St. Louis trader Pierre Chouteau Jr.

Which river flows through Indianapolis?

The White River winds through Indianapolis; the capital was platted there in 1821 in the hope the river would carry steamboat trade, but it proved too shallow.

Oregon's capital lies at the center of which fertile farming valley?

Willamette Valley farmland was the goal of most wagon trains on the Oregon Trail, and the river that gives the valley its name runs north through the capital.

Which river flows through New Hampshire's capital?

The Merrimack River runs on south to Lowell and Lawrence in Massachusetts, where its water power drove much of New England's textile industry in the nineteenth century.

New York's capital is named for a Scottish title held by which future king?

James II was still Duke of York when the English seized the Dutch colony in 1664: the province took his English title and the upriver fur-trading town took his Scottish one.

Massachusetts's capital is named after a market town in which English county?

Lincolnshire's market town had been home to some of the first Puritan settlers, so its name was given to their new settlement in 1630.

Which river flows through Michigan's capital?

The Grand River, Michigan's longest, meets the Red Cedar in the capital; downstream, the mile-long rapids it once ran over gave another city its name.

Which river forms in South Carolina's capital, where the Broad and Saluda meet?

The Congaree River begins at the fall line; George Washington, visiting the new capital in 1791, thought it should have been built below the falls, where trade could flow more easily.

A 1979 nuclear accident near Pennsylvania's capital happened at which plant?

Three Mile Island's Unit 2 reactor partly melted down in March 1979; very little radiation escaped, but no new reactors were ordered in the United States for years afterwards.

Virginia's capital was built at the fall line of what waterway?

James River rapids at the fall line stopped ships going any farther inland, so a trading post and then a town grew up there; William Byrd II had its streets laid out in 1737.

Maine's legislature kept meeting in which city until the State House opened in 1832?

Portland was Maine's capital from statehood in 1820; a more central site was chosen within a few years, but lawmakers stayed put until Charles Bulfinch's new State House was finished.

Which Challenger astronaut taught at a high school in New Hampshire's capital?

Christa McAuliffe taught social studies at the city's high school and was chosen from more than 11,000 applicants for NASA's Teacher in Space Project; she died when Challenger broke apart in 1986.

Which Union general's troops captured South Carolina's capital in February 1865?

William T. Sherman's army marched in on 17 February 1865; much of the city burned that night, and who started the fires has been argued over ever since.

Wisconsin's capital sits on an isthmus between Mendota and which other body of water?

Lake Monona and Lake Mendota frame a strip of land that a land speculator bought and then persuaded the territorial legislature to make the capital.

Which river flows through Minnesota's capital?

The Mississippi River made the city: its downtown grew up around a steamboat landing below the bluffs, at the head of navigation on the river.

Tennessee's capital has a full-scale replica of which ancient building?

The Parthenon went up in 1897 as the centrepiece of Tennessee's Centennial Exposition, chosen because the city called itself the 'Athens of the South'; it was rebuilt in concrete in the 1920s.

Which city was Oklahoma's first state capital before voters moved it in 1910?

Guthrie had been the territorial capital and kept the seat for only three years of statehood, until a statewide vote in June 1910 moved it to a larger rival.

A bridge in Texas's capital shelters the world's largest urban colony of which animals?

Bats under the bridge are Mexican free-tailed mothers: it is a maternity colony, and the males stay away until the pups are born.

Which state's capitol has a step engraved 'One Mile Above Sea Level' at its west entrance?

Colorado first carved the words into the fifteenth step, but a 2003 survey found the true mile-high point was the thirteenth, which now has its own marker.

Which state has the tallest capitol in the US, a 34-story tower where Senator Huey Long was shot?

Louisiana finished the 450-foot tower in little over a year because Long insisted it be completed while he was still governor.

Since 1911 the state fair held in Iowa's capital has displayed a cow sculpted from which food?

Butter cows began with sculptor J.K. Daniels; from 1960 Norma 'Duffy' Lyon added a butter Last Supper, Elvis Presley and a Harley-Davidson.

Which burger chain, known for square patties, did Dave Thomas open in Ohio's capital in 1969?

Wendy's was named for his fourth child, Melinda Lou 'Wendy' Thomas, a choice he later regretted because fame cost her some of her privacy.

Which state's capital hosts the only one-chamber state legislature, whose 49 members are all senators?

Nebraska merged its two chambers into one after Senator George Norris argued it was pointless to have two bodies of people doing the same thing.

Which city was Michigan's capital until 1847, when lawmakers moved inland for fear of British attack?

Detroit had fallen to the British in the War of 1812, so the capital went to an interior settlement of fewer than 20 people.

Which state's capital was founded by Puritans in 1630 and saw colonists dump tea into its harbor?

Massachusetts colonists, some of them in Mohawk disguises, threw 340 or 342 chests of East India Company tea overboard in about three hours.

The college football stadium in Idaho's capital is famous for turf of which unusual color?

Blue turf went down in 1986 as the first non-green playing surface in football history, and no other top-division college had one until Eastern Michigan went gray in 2014.

Who declared 'Give me liberty, or give me death!' in a 1775 speech in what is now Virginia's capital?

Patrick Henry was pressing Virginia's delegates to raise a militia, and they are said to have sat in profound silence for several minutes after he finished.

Which state's capital served as the US capital in 1783–84 and sits beside the Naval Academy?

Maryland's State House is where George Washington resigned his army commission and where Congress ratified the treaty that ended the Revolutionary War.

Which state's capital holds the tomb of the president who issued the Emancipation Proclamation?

Illinois nearly lost his body in 1876, when two Chicago criminals tried to steal it for ransom; it was then hidden elsewhere inside the memorial.

Which state's capital is where Coca-Cola was invented and where CNN went on the air in 1980?

Georgia owes the drink to John Pemberton, a wounded Confederate colonel who was hunting for a substitute for the morphine he was addicted to.

Which state has the most populous capital city in the US, the heart of the 'Valley of the Sun'?

Arizona's capital region picked up the nickname in the 1930s, when it was invented as an advertising slogan to boost tourism.

Which state's capital is where Washington surprised Hessian troops the morning after Christmas 1776?

New Jersey's capital saw almost two-thirds of the Hessian force captured, a win that lifted the army's sinking morale and inspired re-enlistments.

Which civil rights leader was pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Alabama's capital from 1954 to 1960?

Martin Luther King Jr. helped organize the 1955 bus boycott while serving there, and in 1978 the church added 'King Memorial' to its official name.

California's capital was the western end of which 1860 mail service from St. Joseph, Missouri?

Pony Express riders cut coast-to-coast message time to about 10 days, yet the service went bankrupt in 18 months once the telegraph arrived.

Which Mormon leader is said to have declared 'This is the place' on seeing the site of Utah's capital?

Brigham Young, as the account goes, was very sick with a fever and riding in the back of a wagon when he asked to look out over the valley.

Which frontiersman who blazed the Wilderness Road was reburied in 1845 on a bluff above Kentucky's capital?

Daniel Boone died in Missouri in 1820 and was first buried there beside his wife Rebecca; a Missouri legend holds that the Kentuckians dug up the wrong bones.

Which country music show from Tennessee's capital is the longest-running radio broadcast in US history?

Grand Ole Opry began in 1925 as the WSM Barn Dance and took its present name two years later.

Which colonial town was Virginia's capital from 1699 to 1780, in the run-up to the Revolution?

Williamsburg was laid out on the site of an older fortified settlement, Middle Plantation, and lost the title when the governor feared a British attack.

Which city, named for the victor of San Jacinto, briefly served as capital of the Republic of Texas?

Houston began in 1836 as a notional town advertised by two land investors, the Allen brothers, who named it for the general before he became president.

Oregon's capital has a name adapted from a Biblical Hebrew word with what meaning?

Peace is what the Hebrew original means; by one account a founder who filed the town plan suggested it, and some residents later wanted the old name, Chemeketa, back.

New Mexico's capital has a Spanish name, shortened from a longer royal title, with what meaning?

Holy Faith is short for the Royal Town of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi, the name a Spanish governor gave the settlement.

Which Jazz Age novel was written by a native of Minnesota's capital who was born there in 1896?

The Great Gatsby's author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, once came home a failure and rewrote his rejected first novel on the top floor of his parents' house.

Which president sent the 101st Airborne to escort nine Black students into school in Arkansas's capital?

Dwight D. Eisenhower also federalized the state's entire 10,000-member National Guard, taking it out of Governor Orval Faubus's control.

Which 1954 Supreme Court ruling against segregated schools began as a lawsuit in Kansas's capital?

Brown v. Board grew out of a class action by the Browns and twelve other local Black families, and the Court ruled for them 9–0.

Which volcanic cone rises at the eastern end of Waikiki, the beach district of Hawaii's capital?

Diamond Head got its English name from British sailors who found sparkling calcite crystals in the sand and mistook them for diamonds.

Which Maui town, largely destroyed by a 2023 wildfire, was the Hawaiian Kingdom's capital until 1845?

Lahaina lost the title when Kamehameha III moved his government to Oʻahu, whose commercial importance was growing.

Settlers who slipped in early before the 1889 land run that founded Oklahoma's capital earned which nickname?

Sooners hid on the unoccupied land ahead of the noon start to claim the choicest homesteads; the University of Oklahoma's fight song still names them.

Which revolver maker was born in Connecticut's capital, where he later built his firearms factory?

Samuel Colt hired the Whitney Armory to make 1,000 revolvers for the war with Mexico, then bought its machinery and tooling to set up a factory of his own.

Which city, the home of Yale University, shared the role of Connecticut's capital from 1701 until 1873?

New Haven lost its half of the job when sole governance went to its more centrally located rival, and it now bills itself as the state's cultural capital.

Which resort city famous for its historic mansions was a seat of Rhode Island's government until the early 1900s?

Newport's Old Colony House, completed in 1741, took turns hosting the legislature until lawmakers stopped alternating between the state's two largest cities.

Which satirical novelist, a World War II prisoner of war, was born and raised in Indiana's capital?

Kurt Vonnegut came from a long line of German Americans; a forebear, Clemens Vonnegut, had settled in the city and founded a hardware company.

A US Mint opened in Nevada's capital in 1870 to turn silver from which nearby strike into coins?

Comstock Lode ore was the first major silver discovery in the United States, and the mint built to coin it kept working, with one pause, until 1893.

Which US president from New Hampshire is buried in the state's capital beside his wife and two sons?

Franklin Pierce had moved there in 1838, partly because his wife Jane disliked their small home town of Hillsborough.

North Carolina's capital forms which university-rich region together with Durham and Chapel Hill?

Research Triangle is named for the three research universities at its corners: NC State, Duke and the University of North Carolina.

Which river, the longest on the US East Coast, is nearly a mile wide as it passes Pennsylvania's capital?

The Susquehanna runs 444 miles, yet it is the longest river in the continental United States with no commercial boat traffic.

Wyoming's capital was founded in 1867 as a townsite on which transcontinental railroad?

Union Pacific's Grenville Dodge announced the townsite at a Fourth of July celebration in 1867, and the railroad platted it the next day.

Washington state's capital sits on Budd Inlet at the southern end of which larger body of water?

Puget Sound shipping once answered to the city: when Congress created a customs district for the sound in 1851, the customs house went there.

Which city was California's first state capital, where legislators met from 1849 to 1851?

San Jose's first capitol no longer stands; a downtown plaza now covers the site, with two historical markers showing where the legislature first met.

Which state's capital began as the Dutch fur-trading post Fort Orange?

New York's capital grew from that trading post and has held its city charter since 1686, the longest continuous run of any city in the United States.

Florida's capital was chosen as a halfway point between St. Augustine and which other city?

Pensacola hosted the first territorial session in 1822, and members from St. Augustine traveled 59 days by water to attend.

Which two-time Best Actor winner, a star of classic Westerns, was born in Montana's capital in 1901?

Gary Cooper was the son of English immigrants, and his father bought a 600-acre cattle spread about 50 miles north of the city in 1906.

Which Pulitzer-winning Southern writer was born in Mississippi's capital, where her house is now a museum?

Eudora Welty first roamed her home state in the 1930s as a publicity agent for the Works Progress Administration, taking photographs she later published.

Which regionalist painter filled a lounge of Missouri's state capitol with murals of the state's history?

Thomas Hart Benton stirred controversy by painting slavery, the outlaw Jesse James and the political boss Tom Pendergast into the state's story.

Which small southern Indiana town was the state's first capital, until the government moved north in 1825?

Corydon had also hosted the convention that wrote Indiana's first constitution, where 43 delegates met in June 1816.

Builders of Texas's state capitol were paid with three million acres that became which cattle empire?

XIT Ranch land in the Panhandle went to a group known as the Capitol Syndicate, and the tract became the largest cattle ranch in the world.

The big state university in Wisconsin's capital fields teams named after which burrowing animal?

Badgers was first a nickname for the lead miners of the 1820s and 1830s, who spent winters in tunnels burrowed into hillsides.

The word 'capitol', used for statehouses, first named a Roman hill crowned by a temple to which god?

Jupiter's temple stood on the summit of the Capitoline Hill; in Washington the name 'Capitol' replaced 'Congress House', the label on the original city plan.