Hoovervilles
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40 free Hoovervilles trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
When the Great Depression put millions of Americans out of work, many of them lost their homes as well. Shanty towns of scrap wood and tin grew up on vacant lots, riverbanks and rubbish dumps across the country, and people named them after the president they blamed: Herbert Hoover. This quiz collects the most surprising facts about Hoovervilles: the bitter slang that grew up around them, the camps that elected their own mayors, the veterans' march that ended in flames, and the novels, films and stage shows that kept the memory alive. It suits history students revising the 1930s, teachers who want a ready-made classroom round, and anyone curious about how ordinary people got by when the jobs ran out. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What everyday item did homeless Americans of the Great Depression sleep under and nickname a 'Hoover blanket'?
Old newspapers
Old newspapers were the 'Hoover blanket' of the 1930s, layered over people sleeping rough. The joke pinned the hardship on the president, exactly as the name Hooverville did.
Q 02In Depression-era slang, a 'Hoover flag' was which sign of being broke, shown off by turning it inside out?
An empty pocket
An empty pocket pulled out for all to see was a 'Hoover flag', flown to show there was nothing in it. Hoover's critics coined a string of such jabs as the slump deepened.
Q 03Which Mississippi River city had America's largest Hooverville, with districts named Happyland and Merryland?
St. Louis
St. Louis had the country's biggest Hooverville, home to several thousand people on the riverbank. It flooded three times, and each time the residents started over.
Q 04New York's best-known Hooverville, nicknamed 'Hoover Valley', filled a drained reservoir in which Manhattan landmark?
Central Park
Central Park housed 'Hoover Valley' in the dry bed of its old Croton reservoir. Once the squatters had gone, the site was planted with grass and became the Great Lawn.
Q 05Which general, later famous in the Pacific, led the troops that drove the Bonus Army out of its Hooverville?
Douglas MacArthur
Douglas MacArthur sent infantry, cavalry and tanks against the veterans, whose shelters burned. The Army had been called in after a clash with police left two marchers fatally wounded.
Q 06Which 1977 Broadway musical includes the Hooverville number 'We'd Like to Thank You, Herbert Hoover'?
Annie
Annie stumbles into a Hooverville whose residents, once well off, raise a sarcastic toast to the former president. The red-haired heroine began life in a 1924 comic strip.
Q 07Which John Steinbeck novel follows the Joad family to California, where their first stop is a squalid Hooverville camp?
The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath puts the Joads in a Hooverville where a preacher is arrested for knocking down a deputy sheriff. The 1939 novel won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Q 08Which animal of the American South, eaten by the hungry during the Great Depression, was nicknamed the 'Hoover hog'?
Armadillo
Armadillo meat was the 'Hoover hog', a poor family's stand-in for pork. The name blamed the president for the bare larder, just as Hooverville blamed him for the shacks.
Q 09Which Prohibition-era gangster sponsored a free soup kitchen for the jobless early in the Great Depression?
Al Capone
Al Capone sponsored a soup kitchen in an effort to clean up his image. It did not save him: federal prosecutors charged him with twenty-two counts of tax evasion.
Q 10Seattle Hooverville 'mayor' Jesse Jackson hooked his radio to a loudspeaker so neighbours could follow which sport?
Baseball
Baseball drew the crowd: men gathered by Jackson's shack on summer evenings to hear Seattle Indians games called on the air. He was one of the few residents with a working set.
Q 11'Hoover leather' was Depression slang for which cheap material, slipped inside a shoe once the sole had worn through?
Cardboard
Cardboard slipped inside a worn-out shoe was 'Hoover leather', one more jab at the president's expense. The same stuff walled many a Hooverville shack.
Q 12In the slang that gave America 'Hooverville', what was a 'Hoover wagon', often seen with its motor taken out?
A horse-drawn car
A horse-drawn car was a 'Hoover wagon': an automobile with a team hitched up in front. Like 'Hooverville', the name mocked the president whom many blamed for the slump.
Q 13The Bonus Army of jobless veterans built its 1932 Hooverville on the Anacostia Flats in which American city?
Q 21Jesse Jackson, the Texas-born 'mayor' of Seattle's Hooverville, had worked in which trade before the slump?
Lumberjack
Lumberjack was Jackson's old trade, a common one among the timber workers who filled the camp. He and about twenty other jobless men put up its first shacks in October 1931.
Q 22Seattle's main Hooverville rose on a vacant waterfront lot that had housed what kind of wartime business?
A shipyard
A shipyard, Skinner and Eddy's, had filled the nine-acre site during the First World War. The same ground was later given over to unloading container vessels.
Q 23Tacoma's Hooverville, beside the city garbage dump, borrowed the name of which famous California community?
Hollywood
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C. saw thousands of veterans and their families camp on the muddy flats, demanding early payment of a war-service bonus. Many had ridden freight trains to get there.
Q 14Which president vetoed the Bonus Army's cash bonus in 1936, only for Congress to override him and pay the veterans?
Franklin Roosevelt
Franklin Roosevelt proved no keener on the payout than Hoover had been, but Congress overrode his veto. The veterans got their money nine years ahead of schedule.
Q 15Activists for the homeless named a Hooverville-style tent village beside the White House after which president?
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan lent his name to 'Reaganville', a crescent of tents put up by advocates for the homeless. Their fight for the right to sleep in them went all the way to the Supreme Court.
Q 16Which British sci-fi series sent its hero to a 1930 New York Hooverville led by a man named Solomon?
Doctor Who
Doctor Who visited the camp in the 2007 story 'Daleks in Manhattan', with the unfinished Empire State Building looming behind. The Hooverville scenes were really filmed in Cardiff.
Q 17The Wall Street Crash that ushered in the age of Hoovervilles peaked on 29 October 1929, a day known by which nickname?
Black Tuesday
Black Tuesday saw some 16 million shares change hands in a single day of panic selling. Herbert Hoover had been president for less than eight months.
Q 18When Seattle agreed to tolerate its main Hooverville in 1932, the city required that which group not live there?
Women and children
Women and children were barred under the city's deal with the camp, a rule that was almost always kept. A 1934 count found 632 men and just seven women living in the shacks.
Q 19Which photographer took 'Migrant Mother' at a destitute pea pickers' camp in Nipomo, California, in 1936?
Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange found the family by chance after passing a roadside sign for the camp on a cold, rainy afternoon. Her portrait came to symbolise the Great Depression.
Q 20Which future president served as an aide to the general who cleared the Bonus Army's Hooverville in 1932?
Dwight Eisenhower
Dwight Eisenhower, then a major, had misgivings about the operation yet wrote the Army's official report endorsing it. Twenty years later he was running for the White House himself.
Hollywood on the Tideflats, as the camp was known, housed more than 1,000 people at its peak. Police reportedly coined the name, saying the tales told there belonged in a movie script.
Q 24Charles Michelson, credited with putting 'Hooverville' into print in 1930, was publicity chief of which organisation?
Democratic National Committee
Democratic National Committee publicist Michelson was quoted using the word in a report on a new shanty town, and it quickly caught on. Hoover still had more than two years left in office.
Q 25The 1930 New York Times report said to have first printed the word 'Hooverville' described a shanty town in which city?
Chicago
Chicago's colony of homeless men gave the word its first outing in print. The label stuck, and soon hundreds of shack settlements across the country shared it.
Q 26Herbert Hoover, the president mocked by the name 'Hooverville', had made his fortune in which profession?
Mining engineer
Mining engineer Hoover was a very wealthy man by 1914, with a fortune put at about $4 million. The shacks that bore his name were a bitter joke at a rich man's expense.
Q 27Herbert Hoover first won fame in 1914 by organising food relief for which German-occupied country?
Belgium
Belgium was kept fed through the war by a commission Hoover organised and headed. In thanks he was named 'Friend of the Belgian Nation', a title reserved for him alone.
Q 28From 1933 to 1947, the Colorado River landmark that now bears Herbert Hoover's name was officially called what?
Boulder Dam
Boulder Dam was the name ordered by the new interior secretary in May 1933, weeks after Hoover left office. Congress reinstated 'Hoover Dam' in 1947.
Q 29Which future tank general led the cavalry that charged the Bonus Army marchers on Pennsylvania Avenue in 1932?
George S. Patton
George S. Patton, then a major, gave the order to charge; the marchers had been cheering, thinking the troops were parading in their honour. Among them was a veteran who had saved his life in 1918.
Q 30Which 1936 screwball comedy opens with a socialite collecting a 'forgotten man' from a Hooverville at a city dump?
My Man Godfrey
My Man Godfrey stars William Powell as the down-and-out who becomes the family's butler, opposite Carole Lombard. The two leads had once been married to each other.