Albuquerque Trivia
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50 free Albuquerque trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Albuquerque was a Spanish villa on El Camino Real before it was a railroad town, a Route 66 stop, an Atomic Age lab city and the backdrop for Breaking Bad. This quiz works through all of it: the 1706 founding and the dropped 'r', the Duke City nickname, Old Town's San Felipe de Neri Church, the Santa Fe Railway's New Town and the 1937 realignment of Route 66 down Central Avenue. The modern city gets plenty of questions too: the Balloon Fiesta that started with 13 balloons in a mall parking lot, the Sandia Peak Tramway, Sandia National Laboratories and Kirtland, the Sunport, the Lobos, the Isotopes and their Simpsons name, the KiMo's Pueblo Deco and the Netflix studio where Walter White's world was filmed. Every answer is sourced from Wikipedia pages on the city and its landmarks. Play the sets in order, then try the New Mexico or Santa Fe quizzes.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01El Camino Real, the royal road through Albuquerque, ran north from where?
Mexico City
Mexico City sat at the far end of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, and its place on that road made the villa founded in 1706 a trading and military outpost on the long haul north.
Q 02Albuquerque was named for a Spanish nobleman then serving as viceroy of where?
New Spain
New Spain's viceroy had appointed the governor who founded the villa in 1706, and the governor named the new settlement in his honour when he reported it.
Q 03Which letter was dropped from Albuquerque's original Spanish spelling?
An extra R
An extra R: the first one was dropped over the years, but the town in Spain that the name comes from still spells itself Alburquerque.
Q 04Albuquerque is the county seat of which county?
Bernalillo
Bernalillo the county is distinct from Bernalillo the town, which sits just north in Sandoval County.
Q 05Which tech giant was founded in Albuquerque in 1975?
Microsoft
Microsoft started there because Albuquerque was home to MITS, maker of the Altair computer that Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote their first software for; the company left for the Seattle area in 1979.
Q 06What does 'Sandía', the name of Albuquerque's mountains, mean in Spanish?
Watermelon
Watermelon: the popular explanation is the deep pink the peaks turn when the sun sets on the city.
Q 07Which river flows north-to-south through the middle of Albuquerque?
Rio Grande
Rio Grande: despite the name, Spanish for 'big river', a five-mile stretch of it ran completely dry in Albuquerque in July 2022, the first time in 40 years.
Q 08Which billionaire company founder was born in Albuquerque in 1964?
Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos was born there to teenage parents as Jeffrey Jorgensen; the famous surname came later from his stepfather, and he grew up largely in Houston.
Q 09At the Balloon Fiesta, the launch directors who coordinate each take-off are nicknamed what?
Zebras
Zebras: the launch directors wear black-and-white striped outfits and act as traffic cops, so that more than 500 balloons can leave the field safely in each Mass Ascension.
Q 10The first Balloon Fiesta in 1972 marked whose 50th birthday?
A radio station
A radio station: KOB wanted a centrepiece for its anniversary party and invited 21 balloons, but late cancellations and bad weather left only 13.
Q 11In which month does the Balloon Fiesta take place?
October
October only became the Fiesta's month in 1975: the early editions were held earlier in the year, and the event moved to line up with a world championship the city was hosting that autumn.
Q 12The first Balloon Fiesta's 13 balloons took off from what kind of place?
A mall parking lot
A mall parking lot: the Coronado Center's car park hosted the 1972 gathering, which drew up to 20,000 spectators, and a year later Albuquerque was hosting hot-air ballooning's first world championship.
Q 13Albuquerque's Gathering of Nations, held for the last time in 2026, was North America's largest what?
Powwow
Q 21Albuquerque balloonists Ben Abruzzo and Maxie Anderson made the first balloon crossing of what in 1978?
The Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean: Double Eagle II carried them and co-pilot Larry Newman all the way to France, and the feat focused worldwide attention on their home city's ballooning.
Q 22Which cartoon character keeps getting lost after missing 'that left turn at Albuquerque'?
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny first grumbled the line in 1945's Herr Meets Hare, after tunnelling his way to Germany's Black Forest when he was aiming for Las Vegas.
Q 23In 1862, Albuquerque was occupied for several weeks by an army fighting for which cause?
The Confederacy
Powwow: after decades of drawing dancers and drummers to the city each spring, its organisers billed the April 2026 edition as the 'Last Dance' and closed the event for good.
Q 14Which Albuquerque racing family includes Indianapolis 500 winners Al, Bobby and Al Jr.?
Unser
Unser: Albuquerque-born Al won the Indianapolis 500 four times, the last in 1987 just days short of his 48th birthday, taking the oldest-winner record from his own brother Bobby.
Q 15The Sandia Peak Tramway was built by an engineering firm from which country?
Switzerland
Switzerland: a visit there left co-founder Robert Nordhaus set on building a tram of his own, and the firm from Lucerne needed more than 5,000 helicopter trips to finish it.
Q 16Albuquerque's Sandia Peak Tramway opened in 1966 to spare which group a slow drive around the mountain?
Skiers
Skiers: the tram's founders ran the ski area at the top, and the ride spared their customers half an hour or more on an icy, winding mountain road.
Q 17Albuquerque's airport is officially called the Albuquerque International what?
Sunport
Sunport: the municipal airport took the sunny name in 1963, dropped it in 1971 to become Albuquerque International Airport, and brought it back in 1994.
Q 18Which church, built in 1793, stands on the north side of Albuquerque's Old Town Plaza?
San Felipe de Neri
San Felipe de Neri went up after the villa's first adobe church collapsed in the early 1790s, and its thick original walls have been in use ever since.
Q 19Which World War II correspondent's small Albuquerque house is now a branch library?
Ernie Pyle
Ernie Pyle built the little white house in 1940 and was killed covering the Pacific war in 1945; it now lends books as a National Historic Landmark.
Q 20Which railroad reached Albuquerque in 1880 and created 'New Town' two miles east of the old plaza?
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe: it built its depot about two miles east of the plaza, and the boomtown that grew up beside the tracks is today's Downtown.
The Confederacy: General Henry Sibley's Texans marched in that March, but defeat at Glorieta Pass cost them their supply wagons and they had abandoned the town by mid-April.
Q 24Which pop singer and former Disney Channel star was born in Albuquerque in 1992?
Demi Lovato
Demi Lovato was born in the city and started acting at ten on the children's show Barney & Friends, years before Camp Rock made her a Disney star.
Q 25In 1937 Route 66 was realigned through Albuquerque along which street?
Central Avenue
Central Avenue took over from the original 1926 route, which looped north through the state capital and came into town down Fourth Street; the 1937 shortcut sent the highway straight through, east to west.
Q 26Which 2012 superhero blockbuster shot its first scenes in Albuquerque?
The Avengers
The Avengers began filming in the city in April 2011 and moved on to Cleveland that summer, reaching New York, where the story is set, only in September.
Q 27Sandia National Laboratories grew out of which secret wartime project?
Manhattan
The Manhattan Project: Sandia began in 1945 as the Los Alamos division that designed and assembled the bombs' hardware, and in 1949 a Western Electric company was set up to run it.
Q 28Which airline began flying from Albuquerque in 1980 and grew into the airport's largest carrier?
Southwest
Southwest arrived in April 1980, part of the flood of new airlines that deregulation brought to the city, and quickly outgrew every older carrier at the airport.
Q 29Albuquerque's airport was built in the late 1930s with money from which New Deal agency?
The WPA
The WPA: the Works Progress Administration put up the money, Governor Clyde Tingley broke ground in 1937, and the original terminal that opened two years later still stands, now housing TSA offices.
Q 30What are the athletic teams of the University of New Mexico called?
Lobos
Lobos, Spanish for wolves, was the idea of a student newspaper editor in 1920; before that the teams were known only as the 'University Boys' or 'Varsities'.