Detroit Trivia
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100 free Detroit trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
51 free Detroit trivia questions with answers. Detroit is a city people think they know from headlines, and this quiz is for anyone who wants to know it better. Fifty-one questions cover the French fort Cadillac built in 1701, the fire that gave the city its Latin motto, Henry Ford's assembly line and the five-dollar day, the 1967 uprising, Coleman Young, the 2013 bankruptcy and the grand bargain that saved the art museum. There is plenty of culture too: Berry Gordy's $800 loan and Hitsville U.S.A., the Belleville Three and techno, Aretha, Eminem and the White Stripes, plus the food and drink Detroiters argue about, from the two rival coney islands on Lafayette to Vernors, Faygo and square pizza baked in parts trays. Landmarks include the Renaissance Center, the Guardian Building, the Fox, Belle Isle, the Spirit of Detroit and the Joe Louis fist, and a handful of questions cover the Lions, Tigers, Red Wings and Pistons. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and other primary references, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up, so you can trust the ones you miss.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which French explorer founded Detroit in 1701 by building Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit?
Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac
Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founded Detroit in 1701 by building Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit; the Cadillac car brand, created in 1902, took his name and his coat of arms as its logo.
Q 02The name Detroit comes from a French word meaning what?
Strait
'Strait' is the meaning of the French word détroit; the city is named for the Detroit River, the strait that links Lake St. Clair to Lake Erie.
Q 03Windsor, Ontario, sits across the Detroit River in which compass direction from Detroit?
South
It is one of the few places where you drive south from the United States into Canada; Windsor is the southernmost major city in the country.
Q 04At what figure did Detroit's population peak in the 1950 census?
1.85 million
Detroit peaked at 1.85 million residents (1,849,568) in the 1950 census; the 2020 census counted about 639,000, a fall of more than 65 percent.
Q 05In which year did Detroit become the largest U.S. city ever to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy?
2013
Detroit filed for Chapter 9 on July 18, 2013, the largest US municipal bankruptcy to that point; it exited in December 2014 after a 'grand bargain' shielded pensions and the art museum's collection.
Q 06Who was elected Detroit's first Black mayor in 1973?
Coleman Young
Coleman Young won the 1973 election and took office in January 1974, serving five terms, twenty years in all, until 1994.
Q 07Which city replaced Detroit as Michigan's state capital in 1847?
Lansing
Lansing became Michigan's capital in 1847, when the legislature moved it inland from Detroit, partly to put it farther from British-held Canada.
Q 08In which year did Henry Ford's moving assembly line begin operating, revolutionizing car manufacturing?
1913
Ford's moving assembly line began in 1913, cutting Model T chassis assembly from roughly half a day to about ninety minutes.
Q 09With 2% of the US population, Detroit produced roughly what share of American war materiel in WWII?
Over 10%
The output earned the city the nickname 'Arsenal of Democracy'.
Q 10In 2015 Detroit became the first American place in which UNESCO Creative Cities category?
City of Design
UNESCO named Detroit a City of Design in December 2015, the first US city in that category, citing its industrial and automotive design heritage.
Q 11Which ballpark opened in 2000 as the new home of the Detroit Tigers?
Comerica Park
Comerica Park opened in April 2000 in downtown Detroit, replacing Tiger Stadium at Michigan and Trumbull, the ballpark the Tigers had used since 1912.
Q 12How tall is the central tower of the Renaissance Center, the tallest building in Michigan?
727 feet
The Renaissance Center's central hotel tower rises 727 feet over 73 floors, and the riverfront complex opened in 1977.
Q 13Which automaker bought the Renaissance Center in 1996 for use as its global headquarters?
General Motors
General Motors bought the Renaissance Center in 1996 and made the riverfront complex its global headquarters, moving from its longtime base in the New Center area.
Q 21Faygo, the Detroit soda founded in 1907, based its original flavors on recipes for what?
Cake frosting
Brothers Ben and Perry Feigenson, Russian immigrant bakers, built Faygo's first flavors on their cake frosting recipes; decades later Insane Clown Posse made the soda notorious by spraying it over crowds.
Q 22In the 2010s the Ambassador Bridge carried roughly what share of US–Canada merchandise trade?
25%
Through the 2010s the Ambassador Bridge, opened in 1929, carried over 25% of all merchandise trade between the US and Canada, the busiest commercial crossing on the border.
Q 23The Detroit–Windsor cable-stayed bridge begun in 2018 is named after which hockey player?
Gordie Howe
Q 14How much did Berry Gordy Jr. borrow from his family's savings fund to start the label that became Motown?
$800
Berry Gordy Jr. borrowed $800 from the Ber-Berry Co-op, his family's savings fund, in January 1959 to launch Tamla Records, the label that grew into Motown.
Q 15Motown's original headquarters, Hitsville U.S.A., stood on which Detroit street?
West Grand Boulevard
Hitsville U.S.A. stood at 2648 West Grand Boulevard; the house served as Motown's headquarters from 1959 to 1968 and opened as the Motown Museum in 1985.
Q 16In which year did Motown announce it was moving all of its operations from Detroit to Los Angeles?
1972
Motown announced the move to Los Angeles in 1972, after Berry Gordy had shifted much of the company's film and television work there; the name blends 'motor' and 'town'.
Q 17Detroit techno pioneers Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May are known collectively as what?
The Belleville Three
The Belleville Three took their name from Belleville High School in suburban Detroit, where Atkins, Saunderson and May met as teenagers in the late 1970s.
Q 18Where is American Coney Island in relation to its Detroit chili-dog rival Lafayette Coney Island?
Next door to each other
The two restaurants sit next door to each other on West Lafayette Boulevard downtown; Greek immigrant Gust Keros opened American, and his brother William opened Lafayette beside it.
Q 19Detroit-style pizza is rectangular because it was originally baked in steel trays made for what purpose?
Holding automotive parts
The blue steel pans, made for holding automotive parts in Detroit factories, were adopted in 1946 at Buddy's Rendezvous on Six Mile Road for a pie topped with Wisconsin brick cheese.
Q 20Which Detroit pharmacist first served his namesake vanilla-flavored ginger ale in 1866?
James Vernor
James Vernor, a Detroit pharmacist, first sold Vernors ginger ale in 1866; the sharp, barrel-aged drink is the base of the Boston Cooler, a Detroit specialty despite the name.
The Gordie Howe International Bridge honours 'Mr. Hockey', the Red Wings great; its 853-metre main span is the longest of any cable-stayed bridge in North America.
Q 24The Detroit–Windsor Tunnel of 1930 was the how-many-th underwater vehicle tunnel in the US?
Third
It was the third such tunnel, after New York's Holland Tunnel of 1927 and Oakland's Posey Tube of 1928; the mile-long tube opened to traffic in November 1930.
Q 25Belle Isle in the Detroit River covers 982 acres, making it larger than which famous green space?
Central Park
At 982 acres the island outsizes Manhattan's 843-acre Central Park; Frederick Law Olmsted drew plans for it in the 1880s, and it became a Michigan state park in 2014.
Q 26The 1967 Detroit uprising began when police raided what kind of establishment on 12th Street?
A hidden speakeasy bar
Police raided a 'blind pig', a hidden speakeasy bar, above a print shop at 12th and Clairmount early on July 23, 1967; arresting its patrons touched off five days of violence.
Q 27How many people were killed in the 1967 Detroit uprising?
43
The 1967 uprising killed 43 people, 33 of them Black, and injured more than a thousand; over 7,200 were arrested across five days.
Q 28Father Gabriel Richard composed Detroit's Latin city motto in response to which disaster?
The 1805 fire
The 1805 fire, which destroyed almost the whole town on June 11, 1805, prompted the motto 'Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus': 'We hope for better things; it shall rise from the ashes'.
Q 29Which Michigan territorial judge drew up Detroit's radial 1807 street plan?
Augustus Woodward
Augustus Woodward, chief justice of the Michigan Territory, drew up the 1807 plan of radiating avenues; he joked that the street bearing his name ran 'wood-ward', toward the woods.
Q 30In 1909, Detroit's Woodward Avenue got the country's first mile of what?
Concrete roadway
The first mile of concrete roadway in the country was poured on Woodward Avenue north of Six Mile Road in 1909; in 1920 the Woodward and Michigan intersection got one of the first four-way, three-colour traffic lights.