50 free Berkeley trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
43 free Berkeley trivia questions with answers. Berkeley is a city of 124,000 on the east shore of San Francisco Bay and the home of the University of California's founding campus, and it is impossible to quiz one without the other. This Berkeley trivia quiz covers both: how the town got its name from an Anglo-Irish bishop, the Ohlone shellmound and the Peralta rancho, the 1878 incorporation, the failed 1908 vote to make it the state capital, the 1923 fire, and the 1960s upheavals from the Free Speech Movement to People's Park. On the campus side there are questions on the 1868 founding, the Campanile, Memorial Stadium and the fault that runs through it, the Golden Bears and the Big Game, Ernest Lawrence's cyclotron, the sixteen elements discovered there, and Berkeley Unix. The city's food and culture get their turn too: Chez Panisse, Peet's, the Gourmet Ghetto, 924 Gilman, the first curbside recycling in America and Green Day's frontman. All answers were checked against Wikipedia's articles on the city and the university.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Berkeley, California is named after an 18th-century bishop and philosopher from which country?
Ireland
Frederick Billings recalled George Berkeley's line 'westward the course of empire takes its way' while watching ships pass through the Golden Gate in 1866. The bishop said BARK-lee; the city says BERK-lee.
Q 02In which California county is Berkeley located?
Alameda
The county was carved out of Contra Costa County in 1853. Berkeley's eastern border still follows the ridge of the Berkeley Hills into Contra Costa.
Q 03What was Berkeley's population at the 2020 census?
124,321
It borders Oakland and Emeryville to the south and Albany and Kensington to the north.
Q 04Which Indigenous people lived on the site of Berkeley, leaving a shellmound at Strawberry Creek?
The Chochenyo Ohlone
Their grinding pits survive in local rock formations. A park along the old BART cut northwest of campus is named Ohlone Park.
Q 05Which Spanish soldier received the land grant, Rancho San Antonio, that included present-day Berkeley?
Luis Peralta
He divided it among four sons; Berkeley lies mostly on Domingo's portion. Legal title to every parcel in the city still traces back to the grant.
Q 06In what year was the Town of Berkeley incorporated?
1878
Its first trustees were the slate of Denis Kearney's anti-Chinese Workingman's Party. It became the City of Berkeley under a new charter in 1909.
Q 07What was the name of the waterfront settlement of saloons and industry that became West Berkeley?
Ocean View
Shellmound was the rail junction in what is now Emeryville; Temescal was where the horsecar to campus began, along today's Telegraph Avenue.
Q 08A 1908 statewide referendum narrowly rejected moving what to Berkeley?
The state capital
It lost by about 33,000 votes. The streets laid out around the planned capitol grounds were named for California counties and still are.
Q 09How many structures burned in the fire that swept down the Berkeley hills on September 17, 1923?
About 640
A late-afternoon sea breeze stopped it short of downtown and let firefighters get control.
Q 10What land-use rule did Berkeley pioneer in 1916 to keep minorities out of white neighbourhoods?
Single-family zoning
It has been called the first such ordinance in the United States. Nearly half the city was still zoned that way in 2021; small multi-family buildings were legalised citywide in 2025.
Q 11What did the university do in 1964 that triggered the Free Speech Movement?
Banned distribution of political literature on campus
The arrest of Jack Weinberg in Sproul Plaza sparked mass civil disobedience that became a model for later anti-Vietnam War protest.
Q 12Which governor sent the National Guard to occupy Berkeley during the 1969 People's Park fight?
Ronald Reagan
The disputed university lot south of campus stayed undeveloped for decades afterwards.
Q 13Which Berkeley street became the focal point of the hippie movement in the late 1960s?
Telegraph Avenue
Q 21Which element, first made in a Berkeley cyclotron, was named for the city and university?
Berkelium
Berkeley researchers discovered sixteen elements in all, more than any other university, including plutonium and californium.
Q 22How many chemical elements have been discovered at Berkeley?
Sixteen
The list runs from technetium and astatine through neptunium, plutonium and americium to lawrencium, rutherfordium, dubnium and seaborgium.
Q 23In what year was the University of California founded at Berkeley?
1868
It inherited the land of the private College of California and the federal land-grant eligibility created by Lincoln's Morrill Act.
Many of the hippies were apolitical dropouts rather than students, but in 1967-69 the counterculture and the radical left overlapped heavily.
Q 14Which restaurant, opened by Alice Waters in 1971, is called the birthplace of California cuisine?
Chez Panisse
It anchors the North Berkeley strip nicknamed the Gourmet Ghetto, which also holds Peet's Coffee's original store.
Q 15What did Berkeley's Ecology Center start in 1973 that no other US city had done before?
A curbside recycling program
The city followed up by banning Styrofoam in 1988. Its last Republican mayor had left office in 1971.
Q 16What is the nickname of the North Berkeley commercial area packed with famous restaurants and food shops?
The Gourmet Ghetto
Solano Avenue further north hosts the Solano Stroll, the East Bay's largest street festival, every year since 1974.
Q 17Which legendary all-ages punk venue in West Berkeley helped launch Green Day?
924 Gilman
Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong is among the city's notable residents, along with Kamala Harris, Steve Wozniak and Ursula K. Le Guin.
Q 18Which seismic zone runs through Berkeley, straight down the middle of the university's stadium?
The Hayward Fault
Photos and measurements show the fault creeping through Memorial Stadium. Seismologists rate it the Bay Area fault most likely to produce a big quake.
Q 19What is the highest point in the hills above Berkeley, at 1,754 feet?
Grizzly Peak
Codornices, Schoolhouse and Strawberry creeks run from the hills to the Bay, most of them now culverted.
Q 20Which East Bay parkland occupies the upper reaches of Wildcat Canyon east of the city?
Tilden
Berkeley's other green spaces include Indian Rock Park, the Rose Garden and the Marina at the foot of University Avenue.
Q 24Which Berkeley professor invented the cyclotron in 1934 and won the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics for it?
Ernest Lawrence
His Radiation Laboratory became Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which the university still runs on the hill above campus.
Q 25How many Nobel laureates does UC Berkeley count among its alumni, faculty and researchers?
101
They include Jennifer Doudna for CRISPR gene editing and Melvin Calvin for the photosynthesis cycle that bears his name.
Q 26Sather Tower, America's tallest university clock tower, is nicknamed after which Venetian landmark?
St Mark's Campanile
Everyone on campus just calls it the Campanile. South Hall, from 1873, is the oldest university building in California.
Q 27What is the name of Cal's costumed bear mascot, introduced in 1941 to replace live bear cubs?
Oski
He is named after the Oski-wow-wow yell, and only the Oski Committee knows who is inside the suit.
Q 28What trophy has gone to the winner of Cal's Big Game against its arch-rival since 1933?
The Stanford Axe
Cal students invented card stunts at the 1910 Big Game, depicting the trophy and a big blue C.
Q 29What were the university's first school colours, chosen by students in 1873?
Yale Blue and gold
Cal's Rally Committee, formed in 1901, still wears blue and gold rugby shirts as guardian of the traditions.
Q 30Which league did Cal's teams join in 2024 after the collapse of the Pac-12?
The ACC
Berkeley teams have won 107 national championships and 223 Olympic medals.