El Paso Trivia
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7correct to beat the crowd
50 free El Paso trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
El Paso sits where Texas, New Mexico and Chihuahua meet, at the pass in the mountains that gave the city its name. This El Paso trivia quiz covers the geography first: the Rio Grande and Ciudad Juárez, the Franklin Mountains and the country's largest urban park, the Chihuahuan Desert, the Mountain Time Zone quirk and the 302 days of sunshine behind the Sun City nickname. Then it digs into the history and the landmarks. You will meet Juan de Oñate's 1598 Thanksgiving, the Ysleta Mission, Fort Bliss, the Taft-Díaz summit of 1909, the Chamizal settlement, John Wesley Hardin's last dice game and Concordia Cemetery, alongside UTEP's Bhutanese architecture, the 1966 Texas Western champions, the Sun Bowl, the Chihuahuas, the Wyler Aerial Tramway, the Plaza Theatre, Chico's Tacos, the Star on the Mountain and famous El Pasoans from Gene Roddenberry to Khalid and Beto O'Rourke. The 50 questions range from easy to hard, and every answer was checked against documented sources, so the answer key holds up whether you are a lifelong Chuco resident or planning a first visit.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01El Paso sits across the Rio Grande from which Mexican city?
Ciudad Juárez
Ciudad Juárez, in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, faces El Paso directly across the Rio Grande, and the two cities form one of the largest binational metropolitan areas on the US–Mexico border.
Q 02Which interstate highway runs east–west through El Paso?
Interstate 10
Interstate 10 runs through El Paso on its coast-to-coast route from Santa Monica, California, to Jacksonville, Florida, entering Texas at the New Mexico line just west of the city.
Q 03Which time zone does El Paso observe?
Mountain Time
Mountain Time: El Paso and neighbouring Hudspeth County are the only parts of Texas officially outside Central Time, so the city keeps the same clock as New Mexico rather than Dallas or Houston.
Q 04On average, how many days a year does the sun shine in El Paso, earning it the "Sun City" nickname?
302
El Paso averages 302 sunny days a year, roughly 83 percent of possible sunshine, which earned it the Sun City nickname.
Q 05El Paso lies within which desert?
Chihuahuan
The Chihuahuan Desert surrounds El Paso and forms the easternmost section of the Basin and Range region.
Q 06Which mountain range runs through the middle of El Paso?
Franklin Mountains
The Franklin Mountains run 23 miles from El Paso into New Mexico, and give their name to Franklin Mountains State Park.
Q 07How high is the highest peak inside El Paso's city limits?
7,192 feet
North Franklin Mountain reaches 7,192 feet, the highest point in the Franklin Mountains; downtown El Paso sits near 3,740 feet, so the peak rises about 3,400 feet above it.
Q 08El Paso is home to a 24,000-acre state park that is one of the largest what in the nation?
Urban parks
Franklin Mountains State Park, about 24,000 acres lying entirely inside El Paso's city limits, is one of the largest urban parks in the United States.
Q 09The Mexican city across the river was known by what name until 1888?
Paso del Norte
Its full name was El Paso del Norte, the North Pass; it was renamed for Benito Juárez, whose republican forces had stopped there during the French intervention.
Q 10Which Spanish explorer celebrated a Thanksgiving Mass by the Rio Grande near El Paso in 1598?
Juan de Oñate
Juan de Oñate's colonising expedition held a Mass of thanksgiving beside the Rio Grande on 30 April 1598, 23 years before the Pilgrims' 1621 feast at Plymouth.
Q 11Which mission in El Paso is recognized as the oldest continuously operated parish in Texas?
Ysleta
Ysleta Mission was founded in 1682 by Tigua refugees who fled New Mexico after the 1680 Pueblo Revolt, and the parish has served the community without a break since then.
Q 12Which colonial route linked Mexico City to northern New Mexico through El Paso del Norte?
El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro
El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, the 1,600-mile Royal Road of the Interior, crossed the Rio Grande at El Paso del Norte between Mexico City and Santa Fe; it was named a National Historic Trail in 2000.
Q 13El Paso County was established in 1850 with which town as its first county seat?
San Elizario
Q 21The Army post headquartered in El Paso covers roughly how much land across two states?
1,700 square miles
Fort Bliss spans about 1,700 square miles, some 1.12 million acres of Texas and New Mexico, which gives it the largest manoeuvre area of any US Army post.
Q 22Which general was stationed at El Paso's Army post in 1914 and later led the expedition against Pancho Villa?
John J. Pershing
John J. Pershing commanded a brigade at Fort Bliss from 1914 and led the 1916 Punitive Expedition into Mexico after Pancho Villa's raid on Columbus, New Mexico, that March.
Q 23In which year did the treaty settling El Paso's Chamizal border dispute take effect?
1964
San Elizario, the old presidio town downriver from El Paso, was the first seat of El Paso County from 1850; the seat later moved to Ysleta and finally to the city of El Paso.
Q 14Who was hired in 1859 to survey and lay out the street plan of downtown El Paso?
Anson Mills
Anson Mills, a young surveyor who later became an Army general, platted the townsite in 1859 and gave it the name El Paso, replacing the settlement's earlier name, Franklin.
Q 15In what year was the city of El Paso incorporated?
1873
El Paso was incorporated as a city in 1873; the railroads arrived in 1881 and the population passed 10,000 by the 1890 census.
Q 16What lawless nickname did the boomtown earn in the 1880s?
Six-shooter Capital
The Six-shooter Capital was what El Paso's lawlessness earned it; gambling and prostitution flourished until the Army forced a crackdown during World War I.
Q 17Which Old West gunfighter was shot dead in El Paso's Acme Saloon in 1895?
John Wesley Hardin
John Wesley Hardin was shot in the back of the head by constable John Selman at the Acme Saloon on 19 August 1895, moments after calling 'Four sixes to beat' at the dice.
Q 18Which 52-acre El Paso cemetery holds the grave of gunfighter John Wesley Hardin?
Concordia
Concordia holds between 60,000 and 65,000 graves, with sections for Buffalo Soldiers, Freemasons, Mormons and Jewish burials.
Q 19Which US and Mexican presidents met in El Paso in 1909, the first such summit?
William Howard Taft and Porfirio Díaz
William Howard Taft and Porfirio Díaz met in El Paso and Ciudad Juárez on 16 October 1909; a would-be assassin carrying a palm pistol was disarmed a few feet from the two men.
Q 20Which US Army post headquartered in El Paso is home to the 1st Armored Division?
Fort Bliss
Fort Bliss, headquartered in El Paso, became home to the 1st Armored Division in 2011, when the division moved back from Germany after 40 years there.
The Chamizal Convention, signed in August 1963 under President Kennedy, entered into force in January 1964; the Chamizal National Memorial in El Paso commemorates the settlement.
Q 24Under what name was the University of Texas at El Paso founded in 1913?
State School of Mines and Metallurgy
The Texas State School of Mines and Metallurgy was created by a 1913 act and opened in 1914; a practice mineshaft on campus and the Miners team name preserve the mining origins.
Q 25UTEP's campus buildings copy the fortress-monastery style of which Himalayan region?
Bhutan
Kathleen Worrell, wife of the school's first dean, saw photographs of Bhutan's fortress-monasteries in a 1914 National Geographic and thought their mountain setting matched El Paso's.
Q 26In 1966, Texas Western's all-Black starting five beat which team for the NCAA basketball title?
Kentucky
Texas Western beat Kentucky 72-65 in the 1966 final against Adolph Rupp's all-white Wildcats, a game later dramatised in the 2006 film Glory Road.
Q 27Who coached the 1966 Texas Western champions?
Don Haskins
Don Haskins, nicknamed 'the Bear', coached Texas Western and UTEP from 1961 to 1999 and entered the Naismith Hall of Fame in 1997.
Q 28El Paso's Sun Bowl is the second-oldest college bowl game after which one?
Rose
Only the Rose Bowl, first played in 1902, is older than the Sun Bowl, whose first game on 1 January 1935 was between Texas high school teams.
Q 29In what year did Sun Bowl Stadium open?
1963
Sun Bowl Stadium opened in September 1963 on the UTEP campus; its field sits about 3,910 feet above sea level, one of the highest in major college football.
Q 30El Paso's Triple-A baseball team is the Chihuahuas, an affiliate of which MLB club?
San Diego Padres
The San Diego Padres' Triple-A club moved from Tucson to El Paso in 2014, playing at Southwest University Park, built where the old city hall stood.