70 free Americana trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
64 free Americana trivia questions with answers. Americana is the stuff of road trips and small-town nostalgia: neon diners, drive-in movies, a Wurlitzer in the corner, a Coke for a nickel and a Model T in the driveway. This quiz rounds up the icons that make up that picture, from Route 66 and Burma-Shave signs to Rosie the Riveter, Smokey Bear, Cracker Jack prizes and the Cadillacs buried nose-first outside Amarillo. The easy questions ask what the national bird is and who painted American Gothic. The harder ones want the town where the word 'motel' was coined, the year the Liberty Bell was ordered, why the Marlboro Man was invented and which state never got Burma-Shave signs. It suits a Fourth of July party, a classroom unit on US culture or anyone who has ever pulled over for the World's Only Corn Palace. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the object, brand or landmark in question, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
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Q 01Route 66 originally ran from Chicago to which West Coast city?
Santa Monica
The road passed through eight states over 2,448 miles before it was decommissioned in the mid-1980s.
Q 02Which novel popularised Route 66's nickname 'the Mother Road'?
The Grapes of Wrath
The Dust Bowl migrants of Steinbeck's book followed the highway west to California.
Q 03Which Pixar film's plot centres on a small town bypassed by the interstate that replaced Route 66?
Cars
Radiator Springs was modelled on real fading Route 66 towns.
Q 04In what year was Route 66 officially removed from the US Highway System?
1985
Preserved stretches now carry the name Historic Route 66 as a National Scenic Byway.
Q 05The 1960s TV series Route 66 followed two young men travelling the country in which car?
Chevrolet Corvette
Martin Milner beat several actors, including Robert Redford, for the role of Tod.
Q 06The word 'motel' was coined for a 1925 lodging in which California town?
San Luis Obispo
Owner Arthur Heineman shortened 'motor hotel' because the full name would not fit on the roof.
Q 07The Holiday Inn motel chain took its name from what?
A 1942 musical film
Founder Kemmons Wilson opened the first one on the road from Memphis to Nashville in 1952.
Q 08The first drive-in theater opened in 1933 in which state?
New Jersey
Richard Hollingshead patented the idea in Camden; his first screen had speakers on the tower, so people at the back heard a delay.
Q 09Where were the earliest coin-operated phonographs, the ancestors of the jukebox, first installed in 1889?
A San Francisco saloon
Patrons listened through tubes; the machine was a retrofitted Edison phonograph.
Q 10The word 'jukebox' derives from a Gullah word meaning what?
Bawdy
Manufacturers avoided the term for years because of its association with disreputable juke joints.
Q 11The 1946 Wurlitzer Model 1015 jukebox is better known by what nickname?
The Bubbler
It offered a grand total of 24 selections.
Q 12The first crude 'diner' of 1872 was a horse-drawn wagon serving newspaper workers in which city?
Providence, Rhode Island
Walter Scott sold food through windows on both sides of the wagon to Providence Journal employees.
Q 13Which state's golden age of prefabricated diner manufacturing made it 'the diner capital of the world'?
New Jersey
The O'Mahony company of Elizabeth alone turned out 2,000 diners between 1917 and 1952.
Q 21By 1914, assembly lines had cut Model T build time from twelve and a half hours to how long?
93 minutes
Cars came off the line at three-minute intervals.
Q 22Which car surpassed the Model T's sales record in 1972?
Volkswagen Beetle
The Model T's price had fallen from $780 in 1910 to $290 in 1924 thanks to mass production.
Q 23The Ford Mustang was introduced in April 1964 at which event?
The New York World's Fair
Over 400,000 were sold in the first year, and it gave its name to the whole 'pony car' class.
Q 14Coca-Cola was first sold in 1886 at a pharmacy in which city?
Atlanta
It went for five cents a glass at Jacob's Pharmacy, and the nickel price held until 1959.
Q 15John Pemberton created his famous 1886 soft drink as a non-alcoholic version of what earlier product?
A French coca wine
Local prohibition laws forced the switch away from wine.
Q 16Coca-Cola launched the design competition that produced its famous contour bottle in what year?
1915
The brief was a bottle you could recognise by feel in the dark, or identify from a single broken shard.
Q 17Levi Strauss's partner in the 1873 riveted-jeans patent, Jacob Davis, was a tailor in which city?
Reno, Nevada
Davis could not afford the patent fee, so he wrote to his fabric supplier proposing a partnership.
Q 18What did Levi's copper rivets originally reinforce?
Pocket corners
A customer kept buying cloth to patch torn trousers, which gave Davis the idea.
Q 19What lot number was assigned in 1890 to Levi's famous copper-riveted waist overalls?
501
The rivet patent entered the public domain that same year.
Q 20What was the Ford Model T's popular nickname?
Tin Lizzie
More than 15 million were sold, a record that stood until a German rival passed it in 1972.
Q 24Grant Wood's American Gothic depicts a farmer and his daughter in front of a house in which state?
Iowa
The models were Wood's sister Nan and the family dentist, Byron McKeeby.
Q 25Who modelled for the man in American Gothic?
The Wood family dentist
The woman was Wood's sister, dressed in a colonial-print apron.
Q 26Norman Rockwell painted covers for which magazine for nearly five decades?
The Saturday Evening Post
His later, more serious work on civil rights, such as The Problem We All Live With, ran in Look instead.
Q 27Rockwell's The Problem We All Live With shows which six-year-old walking to school past federal marshals?
Ruby Bridges
It was painted for Look magazine as part of a series on racism.
Q 28The 'We Can Do It!' poster later associated with Rosie the Riveter was originally made for which company?
Westinghouse
It was shown only to Westinghouse workers for two weeks in 1943, then vanished for nearly forty years.
Q 29Uncle Sam's famous 'I Want You' recruiting poster of 1917 was drawn by whom?
James Montgomery Flagg
According to legend the character is named for Samuel Wilson, a meat packer from the War of 1812.
Q 30Before Uncle Sam, which male figure personified the American populace?
Brother Jonathan
The female Columbia represented the nation itself, until she became the mascot of Columbia Pictures.