Arlington Heights, Illinois
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40 free Arlington Heights, Illinois trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Arlington Heights sits about 25 miles from downtown Chicago, and for most of a century it was known far beyond Illinois for one thing: Arlington Park, the racetrack where champion thoroughbreds ran and a million-dollar race was born. The track is gone now, but the stories it left behind are some of the best fun facts in the suburbs. This quiz covers the racetrack's famous days, the pioneers and immigrants who built a community around a railroad stop, the teen rock club that booked future legends, and the actors, athletes and entrepreneurs who grew up here. You will also find questions on local schools, parks, roads and landmarks. It is written for residents, former residents and anyone curious about the northwest suburbs. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave with a few facts worth repeating.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Steve Chen, whose family settled in Arlington Heights after leaving Taiwan, co-founded which video-sharing website?
YouTube
YouTube made Chen its chief technology officer. He spent his freshman year at John Hersey High School before moving to the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy.
Q 02Which graduate of John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights won the Best Actress Oscar at 21?
Marlee Matlin
Marlee Matlin won for Children of a Lesser God, becoming the first deaf performer to win an Academy Award. She has been deaf since she was 18 months old.
Q 03Which NFL team completed its purchase of the former Arlington Park racetrack property in February 2023?
Bears
The Bears paid $197.2 million for the 326-acre site, and demolition of the racetrack's grandstand was finished that September.
Q 04Which Hall of Fame running back trained on an Arlington Heights hill, a former landfill, later renamed in his honor?
Walter Payton
Walter Payton ran the slope at Nickol Knoll, now a golf course. After his death it became Payton's Hill, with two plaques marking where he trained.
Q 05A 2010 remake of which horror film shot school scenes at John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights?
A Nightmare on Elm Street
A Nightmare on Elm Street filmed at Hersey and at nearby Elk Grove High School, though neither campus is identified by name on screen.
Q 06Mitsuwa Marketplace, the Arlington Heights supermarket that opened as Yaohan in 1991, sells food from which country?
Japan
Japan is the specialty: the store is the chain's only Midwest location and the largest supermarket of its kind in the region, renovated in 2019 with new food-court restaurants.
Q 07Frontier Days, an Arlington Heights festival with a carnival and parade, leads up to which holiday?
Independence Day
Independence Day caps the festival at Recreation Park, which also brings food stalls and concerts and reached its 50th annual edition in 2026.
Q 08What destroyed the grandstand and clubhouse at Arlington Park on July 31, 1985, weeks before the Arlington Million?
A fire
A fire that started small spread out of control. The race still ran 25 days later in front of temporary bleachers, earning the track a special Eclipse Award.
Q 09Which 1973 Triple Crown winner did Arlington Park lure with a race created for him, the Arlington Invitational?
Secretariat
Secretariat won easily before 41,223 fans, and a year later the track launched a turf race for three-year-olds that carries his name.
Q 10Despite 77,676 residents at the 2020 census, Arlington Heights is incorporated as which type of municipality?
A village
A village is its legal form, even though the 2020 census count of 77,676 made it the 15th-most populous municipality in Illinois.
Q 11Before becoming Arlington Heights in 1874, the settlement carried the surname of which pioneer who lured the railroad?
Dunton
Dunton was the name. William Dunton persuaded the Illinois & Wisconsin Railroad to build through his land and sold it 16 acres for $350 in 1853.
Q 12Which Native American nation kept a seasonal camp in present-day Arlington Heights before ceding the land in 1833?
Potawatomi
The Potawatomi used the camp for about six weeks a year while moving between summer and winter grounds. Their descendants live on a reservation in Mayetta, Kansas.
Q 13Civil War veteran Charles Sigwalt co-founded an Arlington Heights company that built about 40,000 of which product?
Sewing machines
Q 21Which horse won the first Arlington Million in 1981, edging 40–1 longshot The Bart in a photo finish?
John Henry
John Henry won by a nose, a finish cast in bronze as Against All Odds, a statue that overlooked the Arlington Park paddock. He took the race again in 1984.
Q 22Which two-time Horse of the Year tied a modern record of 16 straight wins before 34,000 fans at Arlington Park in 1996?
Cigar
Cigar matched the streak in the Arlington Citation Challenge, a race carded for the occasion and named for the Triple Crown winner whose run he equaled.
Q 23Arlington Park hosted which championship event in 2002, then billed as the World Thoroughbred Championships?
Breeders' Cup
Sewing machines left the Sigwalt factory from 1878 to 1883. Sigwalt, who had fought at Chickamauga, later served as mayor and has a street named for him.
Q 14Many farmers who settled the future Arlington Heights in the 1840s were immigrants from which country?
Germany
Germany sent so many settlers, many of them from Saxony, that the area's makeup had changed by 1850. One, John Klehm, began as a potato farmer and opened a tree nursery in 1856.
Q 15Which commuter rail system serves two Arlington Heights stations, one of them built for the Arlington Park racetrack?
Metra
Metra's Union Pacific Northwest Line stops at both, and the Arlington Park station sits on the main line even though it was designed just for race crowds.
Q 16Arlington Heights lies primarily in which Illinois county, with a small portion reaching into Lake County?
Cook
Cook County holds nearly all of it, mostly in Wheeling Township, with further territory in Elk Grove and Palatine townships.
Q 17Highways along the south and west edges of Arlington Heights give quick access to which nearby international airport?
O'Hare
O'Hare is the nearby hub: Interstate 90 runs along the southern edge of Arlington Heights, and Illinois Route 53 follows the western edge.
Q 18Which newspaper based in Arlington Heights did former teacher Hosea Paddock buy for just $175 in 1889?
Daily Herald
The Daily Herald stayed a weekly for its first century, and four generations of Paddocks ran it before selling their stake to employees in 2018.
Q 19Which 1986 teen film starring Corey Haim and Charlie Sheen shot scenes at the former Arlington High School?
Lucas
Lucas filmed inside and outside the building after the public school closed in 1984, and the movie gave Winona Ryder her screen debut.
Q 20The former Arlington High School building in Arlington Heights, closed in 1984, has since housed which private school?
Christian Liberty Academy
Christian Liberty Academy, founded in neighboring Prospect Heights in 1968, bought the empty building for $1.51 million in April 1985.
The Breeders' Cup arrived two years after Churchill Downs Inc. bought the track, which had just reopened from a two-year shutdown.
Q 24Which synthetic racing surface did Arlington Park install for $11 million in 2007 to replace its dirt oval?
Polytrack
Polytrack was meant to make racing safer and stayed in use until the track closed. A horse named Do the Wave won the first race run on it.
Q 25Which British band, later famous for the rock opera Tommy, played The Cellar teen club in Arlington Heights in 1967?
The Who
The Who played on June 15, 1967, with local band H. P. Lovecraft opening. Cream, The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield also took the club's stage.
Q 26The Cellar, a 1960s Arlington Heights teen rock club, was named for its first home beneath what kind of building?
A church
A church basement housed the club at first, under the old St. Peter's Lutheran, before it moved to an empty Buick dealership beside the railroad tracks.
Q 27Which hard-rock guitarist attended St. Viator High School in Arlington Heights while leading the Amboy Dukes?
Ted Nugent
Ted Nugent arrived after his father was transferred to the area in 1965, and his band became a staple at a local teen dance club until it closed.
Q 28Chris Nowinski, a football captain at John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights, later wrestled for which company?
WWE
WWE made him a wrestler, but his later work is brain science: he co-founded the Concussion Legacy Foundation and Boston University's CTE Center.
Q 29Which quarterback, born and raised in Arlington Heights, started Super Bowl LIV for the San Francisco 49ers?
Jimmy Garoppolo
Jimmy Garoppolo played at Rolling Meadows High School and Eastern Illinois, then went to New England in the second round of the 2014 draft.
Q 30Which actress, raised in Arlington Heights, played Dr. Allison Cameron on House and Emma Swan on Once Upon a Time?
Jennifer Morrison
Jennifer Morrison graduated in 1997 from Prospect High School, where her parents worked, and was an All-State clarinet player in its marching band.