Alaska
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148 free Alaska trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 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 148 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, about 147,000 square miles, is the fourth-largest state; add Texas and California and the three still fall short of Alaska, which could be cut in half and leave Texas in third place.
Q 02What is the capital city of Alaska?
Juneau
Juneau has no road link to the rest of Alaska or North America, so every car and crate arrives by boat or plane; the seat of government moved there from Sitka in 1906.
Q 03Which animal, the largest member of the deer family, often wanders through Alaska's towns and suburbs?
Moose
Moose look placid, but Alaska's wildlife agency says they injure more people in the state each year than bears do, usually when a cow with a calf or a cornered bull feels threatened.
Q 04What is the highest peak in North America, located in Alaska?
Denali
Denali is the Koyukon name, which the state of Alaska has pressed since 1975; Washington called the peak Mount McKinley until 2015, adopted Denali, then restored McKinley as the federal name in 2025.
Q 05What sled dog race, held every March since 1973, covers roughly 1,000 miles across Alaska?
Iditarod
The Iditarod's architects, Dorothy Page and musher Joe Redington Sr., are remembered as the mother and father of the race; Redington went on to enter it many times himself and never won.
Q 06Which whale, a summer regular in Southeast Alaska, is famous for breaching and for bubble-net feeding in groups?
Humpback whale
Humpback whales work as a team off Southeast Alaska, circling beneath a school of fish and blowing curtains of bubbles to corral it before lunging up through the middle with mouths open.
Q 07The 49-star US flag made for Alaska's statehood stayed official for how long?
One year
One year: the 49-star flag became official on July 4, 1959, but Hawaii became a state that August, so a 50-star flag took its place on July 4, 1960.
Q 08What is the name for the midwinter stretch when the sun never rises over Alaska's far north?
Polar night
Polar night falls on the state's northernmost town in mid-November, when the sun sets and stays below the horizon for about two months, leaving only a few hours of twilight around noon.
Q 09The Trans-Alaska Pipeline carries North Slope crude to a marine terminal at which port?
Valdez
Valdez won the terminal because its harbour stays ice-free all year, so tankers can load in any season the crude that has flowed 800 miles south through the pipe.
Q 10Fairbanks sits beneath a ring-shaped zone high in the atmosphere, making it one of the best places to see what?
Northern Lights
Northern Lights flare when charged particles from the sun strike gases high in the atmosphere, and they concentrate in the auroral oval, a ring over the far north that passes above Fairbanks.
Q 11Which Alaska national park is famous for bears catching salmon at Brooks Falls?
Katmai National Park
Katmai National Park streams the falls on live webcams, and since 2014 the public has voted each autumn in Fat Bear Week to crown the bear that has packed on the most weight for winter.
Q 12What derogatory nickname did critics give the 1867 purchase of Alaska?
Seward's Folly
Seward's Folly was one of several jibes from newspapers and opponents who called the land useless, alongside 'Seward's Icebox' and 'Walrussia'; the opposition faded after the Klondike gold strike of 1896.
Q 13Which country's forces occupied the Alaskan islands of Attu and Kiska for about a year during World War II?
Japan
Q 21What is the primary material of traditional Tlingit totem poles?
Red cedar
Red cedar is highly rot-resistant, which is why carvers prized its tall, straight trunks; even so, the rainy coastal climate eventually decays every pole left standing outdoors.
Q 22Which biome covers most of Alaska's North Slope, between the Brooks Range and the Arctic Ocean?
Tundra
Tundra has no forest because bitter cold and a short growing season stunt tree growth, and the soil below stays frozen year-round; dwarf shrubs, sedges, mosses and lichens take the trees' place.
Q 23Which Alaskan volcano erupted in 1912, creating the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes?
Novarupta
Japan seized the two islands in June 1942; when American and Canadian troops stormed Kiska in August 1943 they found it empty, because the garrison had slipped away by sea weeks earlier.
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
Chinook, better known in Alaska as king salmon, grow so large because they can spend several years feeding at sea before returning to their home rivers to spawn.
Q 16Most of the deaths in Alaska's magnitude 9.2 Good Friday earthquake of 1964 were caused by what?
Tsunamis
Tsunamis did most of the killing: waves raised by the lurching seabed and by undersea landslides hit Alaskan ports within minutes, and others crossed the ocean to drown people in Oregon and California.
Q 17Which Alaskan city hosted the start of the Klondike Gold Rush supply route and boomed in the late 1890s?
Skagway
Skagway boomed as the port at the foot of the White Pass, and the narrow-gauge railway built from its docks during the rush still hauls visitors up the pass today.
Q 18Who designed Alaska's state flag, with the Big Dipper and North Star on dark blue?
A teenage schoolboy
A teenage schoolboy, Benny Benson, entered an American Legion contest from a children's home in Seward; the legislature adopted his design, and it was kept unchanged when Alaska became a state.
Q 19Which North Slope oil discovery of 1968 triggered construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline?
Prudhoe Bay
Prudhoe Bay, the largest oil field in North America, lies some 800 miles from the nearest harbour that stays ice-free all year, which is why its discovery forced the building of the pipeline.
Q 20Which tidewater glacier is the main attraction for cruise ships sailing to the head of Glacier Bay?
Margerie
Margerie Glacier was joined to its neighbour, Grand Pacific, until 1992; that glacier has since receded behind mudflats, leaving Margerie's towering ice cliff as the showpiece of the bay.
Novarupta produced the largest eruption of the 20th century, yet until the 1950s a neighbouring mountain got the blame: so much magma drained from beneath it that its summit collapsed into a caldera.
Q 24What is Alaska's yearly payment to residents from its invested oil royalties called?
Permanent Fund Dividend
The Permanent Fund Dividend is paid from a savings fund Alaskans voted to create in 1976, knowing the oil wealth would not last forever; cheques have ranged from $331 in 1984 to $3,284 in 2022.
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, as much as Yellowstone, Yosemite and Switzerland combined; within it stands Kennecott, a copper boomtown that emptied in 1938, when the ore ran out and the last train left.
Q 26Which lead sled dog finished the 1925 serum run and got a statue in Central Park?
Balto
Balto ran only the last leg of the relay, yet ten months later he was in New York for the unveiling of his own statue; Togo, whose team covered the longest stretch, drew far less press at the time.
Q 27In which Alaskan body of water did an Exxon supertanker run aground in 1989, causing a notorious oil spill?
Prince William Sound
Prince William Sound was fouled when the tanker struck Bligh Reef just after midnight; in response Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which phased in double hulls for oil tankers.
Q 28What price did the United States agree to pay Russia for Alaska in 1867?
$7.2 million
$7.2 million worked out at about two cents an acre; Russia was ready to sell because the remote colony would be hard to defend against Britain, its great rival, in any future war.
Q 29What is the rough length of Alaska's tidal shoreline, counting every island, inlet and fjord?
34,000 miles
34,000 miles is NOAA's figure once every island, inlet and fjord is traced: far more than a lap of the Earth's equator, because the coast is so deeply cut and so thickly studded with islands.
Q 30Among the Tlingit and other peoples of the Northwest Coast, what is a potlatch?
A gift-giving feast
A gift-giving feast: the host of a potlatch wins standing by giving wealth away instead of hoarding it, a custom Canada outlawed for more than sixty years, until 1951.