Alaska
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98 free Alaska trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
49 free Alaska trivia questions with answers. Alaska is a land of extremes — the largest U.S. state, home to the tallest peak in North America, the longest coastline, and some of the coldest temperatures ever recorded in the country. From the Tlingit and Yupik peoples who have called it home for millennia, to the Russian fur traders, gold rush prospectors, and oil boom pioneers who shaped its modern identity, Alaska's story is as vast as its landscape. Test your knowledge across geography, history, wildlife, culture, and more.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Alaska is bigger than the next three largest states combined: Texas, California and which other?
Montana
Montana is the fourth-largest state at about 147,000 square miles; Texas, California and Montana together total roughly 579,000 square miles, well short of Alaska's 663,268.
Q 02What is the capital city of Alaska?
Juneau
The capital moved there from Sitka in 1906; it is the only U.S. state capital not reachable by road.
Q 03Which country sold Alaska to the United States in 1867?
Russia
Russia sold Alaska in a treaty negotiated by Secretary of State William Seward and signed on March 30, 1867; the formal transfer ceremony took place at Sitka on October 18, 1867.
Q 04What is the highest peak in North America, located in Alaska?
Denali
Denali (formerly known as Mount McKinley) stands at 20,310 feet and is the highest peak in North America. Its name comes from the Koyukon Athabaskan word meaning "the high one."
Q 05What sled dog race, held every March since 1973, covers roughly 1,000 miles across Alaska?
Iditarod
The Iditarod, first run in 1973, has a ceremonial start in downtown Anchorage on the first Saturday of March and then covers roughly 1,000 miles of the historic Iditarod Trail to the Bering Sea coast.
Q 06Which large marine mammal, often seen in Alaska's Inside Passage, is known for its breaching?
Humpback whale
Humpback whales feed in Southeast Alaska each summer and are famous for launching their 30-ton bodies almost clear of the water; the same animals winter and breed off Hawaii.
Q 07In what year did Alaska officially become the 49th U.S. state?
1959
1959: Alaska had been an organized territory since 1912, with home rule for its cities extremely limited until statehood took effect.
Q 08What is the largest city in Alaska by population?
Anchorage
Anchorage has about 290,000 residents, roughly 40 percent of Alaska's population; with the Matanuska-Susitna Borough its metro area holds more than half of all Alaskans.
Q 09The Trans-Alaska Pipeline carries North Slope crude to a marine terminal at which port?
Valdez
The 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline, completed in 1977 after three years and about $8 billion of construction, ends at the Valdez Marine Terminal, an ice-free port where tankers load the crude.
Q 10What phenomenon, caused by charged solar particles striking the atmosphere, lights Alaska's winter night sky?
Northern Lights
The Northern Lights form when charged particles from the sun collide with gases high in the atmosphere; Fairbanks, sitting under the auroral oval, sees them on most clear winter nights.
Q 11Which Alaska national park is famous for brown bears catching salmon at Brooks Falls?
Katmai National Park
Katmai National Park is home to Brooks Falls, where dozens of brown bears congregate each summer to feast on sockeye salmon leaping upstream. The park's bear cams have become an internet sensation.
Q 12What derogatory nickname did critics give the 1867 purchase of Alaska?
Seward's Folly
Seward's Folly looked like a waste of money on frozen land until the gold rushes of the 1890s and the oil found in 1968 proved the critics spectacularly wrong.
Q 13Which Indigenous people, who call themselves Unangan, are native to the island chain stretching from Alaska toward Russia across the North Pacific?
Q 21What is the primary material of traditional Tlingit totem poles?
Red cedar
Western red cedar (Thuja plicata) is the traditional wood: its straight, rot-resistant trunks can be carved in one piece, though even cedar poles eventually decay in the wet coastal climate.
Q 22What treeless Arctic biome with permafrost covers much of northern Alaska?
Tundra
Tundra, treeless ground over permanently frozen soil, covers Alaska's North Slope; the word reached English through Russian, and thawing permafrost releases methane and carbon dioxide from ancient plant matter.
Q 23Which Alaskan volcano erupted in 1912, creating the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes?
Novarupta
Aleut
Aleut is the outsiders' name, spread by Russian fur traders; the people call themselves Unangan or Unangas, both meaning 'people', and their homeland runs the length of the Aleutian chain.
Q 14During the summer solstice, approximately how many hours of daylight does Fairbanks, Alaska experience?
About 21 hours
Fairbanks gets about 21 hours and 49 minutes of direct sunlight on the summer solstice, plus extended twilight that makes it never truly dark. Only locations above the Arctic Circle experience a full 24-hour midnight sun.
Q 15Which species is the largest Pacific salmon, prized by anglers on Alaska's Kenai River?
Chinook
The Chinook, also called king salmon, is the largest Pacific salmon; the sport-caught world record, a 97-pound 4-ounce fish, was taken on the Kenai River in 1985.
Q 16What magnitude did the 1964 Great Alaska Earthquake reach?
9.2
The magnitude 9.2 quake struck at 5:36 pm on Good Friday, March 27, 1964, and shook for about four and a half minutes; it is the strongest earthquake ever recorded in North America.
Q 17Which Alaskan city hosted the start of the Klondike Gold Rush supply route and boomed in the late 1890s?
Skagway
Skagway, at the foot of the White Pass trail, held an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 people by mid-1898, briefly Alaska's largest city, as about 1,000 stampeders a week passed through toward the Yukon.
Q 18Who designed Alaska's state flag, with the Big Dipper and North Star on dark blue?
A teenage schoolboy
Benny Benson, an Alaska Native living at a children's home, beat roughly 700 entries in a 1927 contest run by the American Legion for pupils in grades seven to twelve.
Q 19Which North Slope oil discovery of 1968 triggered construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline?
Prudhoe Bay
It is the largest oil field in North America and originally held some 25 billion barrels; Humble Oil and ARCO confirmed it with the Prudhoe Bay State #1 well.
Q 20Which 21-mile tidewater glacier, rising on Mount Root, is among the most visited sights on Alaska cruises?
Margerie
Margerie Glacier flows 21 miles from Mount Root to the head of Glacier Bay, where its 250-foot face calves into Tarr Inlet; unlike most of the bay's glaciers it has stayed roughly stable for decades.
Novarupta's June 1912 eruption, the largest of the 20th century, buried 40 square miles up to 700 feet deep in ash; Katmai was made a national monument in 1918 to protect the valley.
Q 24What is Alaska's yearly payment to residents from its invested oil royalties called?
Permanent Fund Dividend
The Permanent Fund Dividend, paid every year since 1982, comes from the investment earnings of the Alaska Permanent Fund, set up in 1976 to invest oil royalty revenues; payments have ranged from about $300 to over $2,000.
Q 25What is the largest US National Park Service area, an Alaskan expanse about the size of Croatia?
Wrangell-St. Elias
Wrangell-St. Elias covers 13.2 million acres, about six Yellowstones, and holds Malaspina Glacier, the largest piedmont glacier in North America, and Mount Blackburn, the highest of the Wrangell Mountains at 16,390 feet.
Q 26Which lead sled dog finished the 1925 serum run and got a statue in Central Park?
Balto
Balto led Gunnar Kaasen's team on the final leg of the 1925 diphtheria serum relay, and his Central Park statue was unveiled that December; many mushers argue Togo, who ran the longest and most dangerous stretch, deserved more credit.
Q 27In which Alaskan body of water did the Exxon Valdez run aground in 1989?
Prince William Sound
On March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez struck Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil. The spill eventually covered 1,300 miles of coastline and killed hundreds of thousands of seabirds, otters and seals.
Q 28Approximately how much did the United States pay Russia for Alaska in 1867?
$7.2 million
The U.S. paid $7.2 million, about two cents an acre, for 586,412 square miles; the Senate ratified the treaty in April 1867 and the House voted the money in July 1868.
Q 29Approximately how many miles of tidal shoreline does Alaska have?
34,000 miles
Alaska has about 34,000 miles of tidal shoreline, more than a third of the U.S. total, thanks to its deeply indented coast, thousands of islands and the long Aleutian arc; its general coastline alone runs 6,640 miles.
Q 30Which highly complex Alaska Native language family includes Tlingit?
Na-Dene
Na-Dene groups Tlingit with Eyak and the Athabaskan languages; Edward Sapir proposed the link in 1915, and after decades of debate scholars placed Tlingit as a separate branch alongside Eyak-Athabaskan.