Anchorage Trivia
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50 free Anchorage trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Anchorage holds nearly 40 percent of Alaska's people and sits almost exactly the same distance from New York, Tokyo and Murmansk, which is why a FedEx hub and the world's third-busiest cargo airport ended up in a city that started as a railroad tent camp on Ship Creek in 1915. It was levelled by a magnitude 9.2 earthquake in 1964, then rebuilt on oil money after the 1968 Prudhoe Bay strike. These 50 questions range across the city's geography on Cook Inlet, Captain Cook's bad-tempered naming of Turnagain Arm, the Good Friday quake, the Iditarod's ceremonial start on Fourth Avenue, Fur Rendezvous, the thousand moose that winter in town, and the airport, port and military bases that run its economy. Easy questions cover the inlet, the railroad and the Iditarod; the hard end asks about sister cities, record snowfalls and a 1970s basketball team that played 5,000 miles from its nearest rival. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation attached. Play it on your phone or print it for an Alaska-themed quiz night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01About two in five Alaskans live in Anchorage; which far smaller city is the state capital?
Juneau
Juneau. It has about a ninth of Anchorage's population, which is why Alaskans voted in the 1970s to build a new capital nearer the big city, then refused to pay for it.
Q 02About how many people lived in Anchorage at the 2020 census?
290,000
About 290,000. The count of 291,247 was slightly below 2010's after decades of growth, and estimates in the years after ran a few thousand lower.
Q 03Anchorage sits at the head of which body of water?
Cook Inlet
Cook Inlet. Its tidal range is so large that the incoming tide can arrive as a wall of water up to six feet high, which a few local surfers ride for miles.
Q 04Which arm of water lies to the north of Anchorage?
Knik Arm
Knik Arm. A glacier of the same name feeds it, and the city's port sits on its shore, so nearly every container ship bound for Anchorage sails up it.
Q 05Anchorage began in 1915 as a tent city beside which waterway?
Ship Creek
Ship Creek. King and silver salmon still run up it past the industrial yards each summer, so anglers cast for them within sight of downtown offices.
Q 06Construction of what triggered the founding of Anchorage?
The Alaska Railroad
The Alaska Railroad. Congress funded the line in 1914, and within a year the builders had moved their headquarters from Seward to a camp of tents that became the city.
Q 07Which summit above Anchorage is widely regarded as the most-climbed in Alaska?
Flattop Mountain
Flattop Mountain. Its trailhead is half an hour from downtown, so thousands make the steep three-mile outing, which ends in a hands-on scramble.
Q 08The Municipality of Anchorage covers roughly 1,960 square miles, almost the size of which state?
Delaware
Delaware. A 1975 merger of the city with its surrounding borough stretched the limits south to Portage Glacier, so most of 'Anchorage' is mountain and forest.
Q 09Anchorage is almost equidistant from New York, Tokyo and which Russian city?
Murmansk
Murmansk. All three cities lie roughly 5,500 kilometres from Anchorage, and the shortest route to the Russian port passes almost directly over the North Pole.
Q 10Anchorage's international airport is named after which long-serving US senator from Alaska?
Ted Stevens
Ted Stevens. The legislature renamed the airport for him in 2000, though it was the scene of a 1978 crash that he survived and his wife did not.
Q 11Anchorage first won the All-America City Award in 1956, three years before which milestone?
Alaska's statehood
Alaska's statehood. Anchorage won as a territorial town while its newspaper publisher led the statehood campaign, then won again in 1965, 1985 and 2002.
Q 12Mount Susitna, on the skyline across the water from Anchorage, is better known by which nickname?
The Sleeping Lady
The Sleeping Lady. From the city its long, low outline looks like a woman lying on her back, and a local legend says she is a giantess waiting for her beloved.
Q 13The sailing master on the 1778 voyage into Anchorage's waters later commanded which ship?
HMS Bounty
Q 21In 1976 Alaska voters approved building a new capital near which town?
Willow
Willow. The choice kept the capital out of Anchorage itself and set off a land rush in the tiny town, but voters later refused to pay for the move and it never happened.
Q 22Which ski town, once called Glacier City, lies inside Anchorage's municipal limits?
Girdwood
Girdwood. It began as a gold miners' supply camp, and most of the town moved up its valley after the 1964 earthquake wrecked the original site beside the water.
Q 23Anchorage lies farther north than Oslo, Stockholm and Helsinki, but south of which capital?
Reykjavik
Reykjavik. At 61 degrees north Anchorage sits about a degree above Helsinki, far enough to bring some 22 hours of usable daylight at midsummer.
HMS Bounty. William Bligh was 23 when he navigated the Resolution through these waters, and eleven years later his own crew mutinied and set him adrift in the Pacific.
Q 14The 1778 expedition that named Turnagain Arm, near Anchorage, was hunting for what?
The Northwest Passage
The Northwest Passage. The arm proved to be another dead end, so the ships had to turn again, and the captain put his disappointment on the chart as 'River Turnagain'.
Q 15Which Alaska Native people's traditional homeland includes the site of Anchorage?
Dena'ina Athabaskans
Dena'ina Athabaskans. Their name for the place, Dgheyay Kaq', now appears on city trail signs, and the downtown convention centre is named after them.
Q 16In 1915 residents of the new town of Anchorage voted to rename it what?
Alaska City
Alaska City. It won the August vote over suggestions such as Terminal and Gateway, but the authorities never made the change and the post office's 'Anchorage' stuck.
Q 17Anchorage's 1964 Good Friday earthquake is the second most powerful ever recorded; which country had the strongest?
Chile
Chile. Its 1960 earthquake reached magnitude 9.5; Alaska's 9.2 lasted about four and a half minutes and sent whole tracts of Anchorage sliding into the sea.
Q 18How did Genie Chance steady Anchorage after the 1964 earthquake?
Radio broadcasts
Radio broadcasts. From the public safety building she relayed official instructions and passed messages between separated families, staying on the air through the night and all the next day.
Q 19Why did dozens of Anchorage homes slide seaward in the 1964 earthquake?
Liquefied ground
Liquefied ground. Minutes of shaking turned the soil under the bluff to slurry, and the broken, rippled land it left is now preserved as Earthquake Park.
Q 20Oil discovered where in 1968 shifted Anchorage's economy?
Prudhoe Bay
Prudhoe Bay. The North Slope strike proved to be the largest oil field in North America, and the companies that pumped it ran their Alaska operations from Anchorage offices.
Q 24Which range forms Anchorage's eastern boundary?
Chugach Mountains
Chugach Mountains. Almost half a million acres of the range form one of America's largest state parks, most of it inside the city limits and 20 minutes from downtown offices.
Q 25Why are tourists warned off Anchorage's mudflats?
Fine glacial silt traps walkers
Fine glacial silt traps walkers. The flats look firm at low tide but can hold a leg fast, and one of the biggest tides in North America soon comes back in over them.
Q 26Which large animal roams Anchorage in such numbers that drivers are warned to watch for it in winter?
Moose
Moose. Hundreds live inside the city all year, browsing in parks and backyard gardens, and more than a hundred are killed on its roads in a typical year.
Q 27Which marine mammals are often seen from the Seward Highway south of Anchorage?
Beluga whales
Beluga whales. The white whales follow runs of salmon and hooligan up the arm in July and August, close enough to shore to watch from roadside turnouts.
Q 28What does local folklore say about fireweed going to seed?
Winter is six weeks away
Winter is six weeks away. The pink blooms open from the bottom of the stalk upward through late summer, so when the top ones turn to fluff, the saying goes, the season is spent.
Q 29Anchorage reached 90 degrees Fahrenheit for the first time on which holiday in 2019?
Independence Day
Independence Day. The reading beat the city's previous all-time high by five degrees, in a place where a normal July afternoon reaches about 66.
Q 30About how much snow fell on Anchorage in the record-breaking winter of 2011-12?
11 feet
About 11 feet. The 134.5 inches nearly doubled the usual 75, yet three winters later the city set the opposite record with barely two feet.