Austin Trivia
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48 free Austin trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
44 free Austin trivia questions with answers. Austin is the city that keeps itself weird, and this quiz covers why: the capital that started as Waterloo, the granite Capitol taller than Washington's, the 1.5 million bats under the Congress Avenue Bridge, Barton Springs and its salamander, the last moonlight towers on earth, the University of Texas and its Longhorns, SXSW, Austin City Limits, Whole Foods, Dell, Tesla, breakfast tacos and the brisket line at Franklin. Easy questions are for anyone who has visited. Harder ones ask what the town was called before 1839, how the Capitol was paid for, how tall the UT Tower is, which label turned Willie outlaw, and what Whole Foods was called before it was Whole Foods. It suits a bachelor-party weekend, a newcomer's welcome or a Texas-themed pub quiz round. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the city, its landmarks, its institutions and its festivals, and each question carries its source.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Austin called before being renamed in 1839?
Waterloo
Waterloo. Scouts for a new capital found just four families living there in 1839; lawmakers named the chosen site Austin, and the hamlet's own name was dropped.
Q 02Austin is named after Stephen F. Austin, who is known by what title?
The Father of Texas
The Father of Texas. He led the first American colonists into Texas, lost the new republic's 1836 presidential election, and died that December, three years before the city named for him was founded.
Q 03What is Austin's official slogan?
The Live Music Capital of the World
The Live Music Capital of the World. In 1991 a blues musician pitched 'Music Capital of the USA', a council member countered with 'of the Universe', and the city settled on the World as a compromise.
Q 04Librarian Red Wassenich says he coined which slogan in 2000?
Keep Austin Weird
Keep Austin Weird. The phrase came to him while phoning a donation to a radio show; about two years later two local shops put it on bumper stickers in a fight that kept a big Borders bookstore from opening nearby.
Q 05Which downtown crossing of Lady Bird Lake houses North America's largest urban bat colony?
Congress Avenue Bridge
Congress Avenue Bridge. A 1980 renovation left inch-wide joints under the deck that made a perfect roost, and alarmed residents signed petitions to have the bats exterminated before the city came round.
Q 06What species of bat lives under Austin's downtown bridge?
Mexican free-tailed bat
Mexican free-tailed bat. Nearly all of them are females that fly up from Mexico each spring to give birth, one pup apiece, which is why the colony swells to about 1.5 million by late summer.
Q 07Barton Springs Pool stays near 70 °F all year because its water comes from which source?
The Edwards Aquifer
The Edwards Aquifer. Its springs keep the pool at much the same temperature in every season, and Robert Redford, who learned to swim there as a child, later co-produced a documentary about the fight to protect them.
Q 08Two endangered species of which animal live in the waters of Austin's Barton Springs?
Salamander
Salamander. The Barton Springs salamander and the Austin blind salamander both live in the pool, and since 1998 the city has needed a federal endangered-species permit just to clean and run it.
Q 09Barton Springs lies in which Austin park, named for the ice-maker who once owned the springs?
Zilker Park
Zilker Park. Andrew Zilker used the spring water to make his ice, and when he handed the land over from 1917 he arranged for the deal to endow shop and home-economics classes in Austin's schools.
Q 10Austin's downtown reservoir, Lady Bird Lake, was known by what name until 2007?
Town Lake
Town Lake. Built in 1960 to cool a power plant, it had weedy, littered banks until the former First Lady championed the trail and plantings around it; the city renamed it for her weeks after her death.
Q 11What has been banned in Lady Bird Lake since 1964?
Swimming
Swimming. Dirty water is not the reason: the council passed the ban 3 to 2 in an emergency vote, weeks after two young sisters were swept to their deaths there on Mother's Day 1964.
Q 12The Texas State Capitol, completed in 1888, is sheathed in what distinctive material?
Sunset red granite
Sunset red granite. The plans called for local limestone, but it streaked with rust, so the owners of Granite Mountain near Marble Falls gave the state all the stone it needed for nothing.
Q 13How does the height of the Texas Capitol compare with the US Capitol in Washington?
It is taller
Q 21Whose last-minute run won Texas the 2006 Rose Bowl?
Vince Young
Vince Young. He scored with 19 seconds left to win 41–38, ending USC's run of 34 straight victories and giving Texas its fourth national title and first in 35 years.
Q 22Which two Longhorns have won the Heisman Trophy?
Earl Campbell and Ricky Williams
Earl Campbell and Ricky Williams. Campbell, the 'Tyler Rose', won in 1977 after an unbeaten regular season, and Williams followed in 1998 by breaking Tony Dorsett's 22-year-old career rushing record.
Q 23Which conference did Texas and Oklahoma leave the Big 12 to join?
The SEC
It is taller. Modelled on the Capitol in Washington, the Texas dome nonetheless rises higher, though the tallest statehouse of all is Louisiana's 450-foot tower.
Q 14How was the construction of the Texas Capitol paid for?
With three million acres of Panhandle land
With three million acres of Panhandle land. The Chicago syndicate that took the contract turned its payment into the XIT Ranch, a cattle empire spread across ten Panhandle counties.
Q 15Which statue stands atop the dome of the Texas Capitol?
The Goddess of Liberty
The Goddess of Liberty. The zinc original was plucked off by helicopter in 1985 and retired to a museum, and an aluminium copy cast from her moulds took her place on the dome.
Q 16Austin is the only city in the world still known to have what kind of 19th-century street lighting?
Moonlight towers
Moonlight towers. The 165-foot towers went up in 1894 and 1895 and found fresh fame a century later as the keg-party spot in Dazed and Confused, though the film had to build a mock-up.
Q 17A bronze statue of which Texas blues guitarist stands beside Lady Bird Lake in Austin?
Stevie Ray Vaughan
Stevie Ray Vaughan. Killed in a 1990 helicopter crash, he is remembered beside the outdoor stage where he played many Austin shows: the figure stands at rest while his bronze shadow plays guitar.
Q 18What is the traditional nickname of UT Austin's campus?
The Forty Acres
The Forty Acres. That was the size of the College Hill plot set aside for a university when Austin became the capital, though the main campus has long since swallowed more than 400.
Q 19UT's Harry Ransom Center keeps one of the world's few complete copies of what on permanent display?
The Gutenberg Bible
The Gutenberg Bible. Gutenberg's shop printed more than 150 copies in the 1450s, but only about twenty survive complete; Texas acquired this one in 1978 and has kept it on view ever since.
Q 20Which pair met as students at UT Austin and went on to write Bottle Rocket together?
Owen Wilson and Wes Anderson
Owen Wilson and Wes Anderson. They first shot Bottle Rocket in 1992 as a 13-minute black-and-white short, with Owen and his brother Luke as apprentice thieves, and its Sundance showing led to the 1996 feature.
The SEC. Invited in 2021, the two schools were so keen to go that they agreed to pay the Big 12 a combined $100 million to leave in 2024, a year ahead of schedule.
Q 24SXSW was planned in which publication's offices?
Austin Chronicle
The Austin Chronicle. Staff of the alt-weekly and a booking agent swore one another to secrecy while planning it in 1986, then expected about 150 people at the first festival in 1987; 700 registered.
Q 25Which social platform famously gained early traction at SXSW Interactive in 2007?
Twitter. The young service saw its traffic triple during the festival, from 20,000 messages a day to 60,000, and the company itself calls those days in Austin its tipping point.
Q 26Which US president appeared at SXSW Interactive while still in office?
Barack Obama
Barack Obama. In a 2016 keynote interview, with the FBI fighting Apple over a locked iPhone, he told the tech crowd not to take an 'absolutist view' on encryption or to put their phones above every other value.
Q 27The media group that bought half of SXSW in 2021 also publishes which music magazine?
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone. Its owners took a 50% stake after the pandemic forced SXSW to cancel its 2020 festival a week before opening; the festival's co-founder called the deal 'a true lifeline'.
Q 28Austin City Limits is the only television show to have received which honour?
The National Medal of Arts
The National Medal of Arts. The 2003 honour crowned a show that began as a one-off pilot for a PBS pledge drive: it raised so much money that the network ordered a series.
Q 29Austin City Limits moved from KLRU's Studio 6A to which venue in 2011?
The Moody Theater
The Moody Theater. It was the show's first move in 36 seasons, out of a campus television studio and into a downtown concert hall built for it, with about 2,700 seats beneath a hotel tower.
Q 30Which converted armory was the hub of Austin's 1970s music boom, drawing hippies and cowboys to the same shows?
Armadillo World Headquarters
Armadillo World Headquarters. Its blend of country and rock was nicknamed 'cosmic cowboy' music; the hall closed with a New Year's Eve show in 1980 and was knocked down for an office block.