Inland Empire
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40 free Inland Empire trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Inland Empire is the spread of valleys, mountains and desert east of Los Angeles, and around fifty cities and towns share it. Some grew out of citrus colonies and railroad junctions, others out of resort hotels, military bases and warehouse parks, and almost every one has a story it likes to tell about itself. This quiz asks you to match those cities to their claims to fame: the nicknames, the founders, the festivals, the fast-food firsts and the odd roadside landmark. A few questions step outside the city limits to the peaks, lakes and weather that shape life in the region. It is written for locals who want to test their home turf, and for visitors and newcomers who know the freeway signs but not the stories behind them. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which Inland Empire city did Richard and Maurice McDonald open the first McDonald's in 1940?
San Bernardino
San Bernardino is where the brothers started with a barbecue stand before rebuilding the business around hamburgers in 1948. Ray Kroc first visited because they had bought eight of his milkshake mixers.
Q 02The Coachella music festival is held at the Empire Polo Club in which Inland Empire desert city?
Indio
Indio calls itself the City of Festivals, and the same polo grounds host the Stagecoach country music festival the weekend after Coachella ends.
Q 03Which fruit did Eliza Tibbets plant in the Inland Empire in the 1870s, starting a citrus boom?
Navel orange
Navel orange trees from Brazil reached her through a friend at the US Department of Agriculture, and one of her original trees was later preserved as a landmark.
Q 04Which historic highway follows Foothill Boulevard through the Inland Empire, past a tepee motel?
Route 66
Route 66 ran from Chicago to Santa Monica, and the Wigwam Motel beside it is one of seven tepee villages built across the country between 1933 and 1949.
Q 05Which British band launched its first American tour at the Inland Empire's Swing Auditorium in 1964?
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones played their first US tour date there; a light plane crashed into the auditorium in 1981 and the building had to be demolished.
Q 06Which Inland Empire desert resort city had singer Sonny Bono as its mayor from 1988 to 1992?
Palm Springs
Palm Springs elected Bono after he grew frustrated with city bureaucracy while trying to open a restaurant there. He later won a seat in Congress.
Q 07Which hot, dry winds funnel through the Cajon Pass into the Inland Empire and fan autumn wildfires?
Santa Ana
Santa Ana winds begin inland and warm as they sink toward the coast, which is why they often bring the hottest weather of the year in autumn.
Q 08In the TV drama The O.C., troubled teenager Ryan Atwood comes from which Inland Empire city?
Chino
Chino is where Ryan lives before the wealthy Cohen family takes him in. The real city was long a dairy-farming center and holds a state men's prison opened in 1941.
Q 09Which city, home of the Mission Inn, is the most populous in the Inland Empire?
Riverside
Riverside has more than 300,000 residents, and Richard and Pat Nixon were married at its Mission Inn, the largest Mission Revival building in the United States.
Q 10Which national park, named for a spiky desert yucca, straddles both counties of the Inland Empire?
Joshua Tree
Joshua Tree spans two deserts, a higher one where its namesake plant grows and a lower, hotter one. U2 named a 1987 album after the plant.
Q 11Which Inland Empire city, laid out by the Chaffey brothers in 1882, has the region's main airport?
Ontario
Ontario was named by the brothers for their home province in Canada. They left four years later to found irrigation colonies in Australia.
Q 12The Hells Angels motorcycle club was founded in 1948 in which Inland Empire steel town?
Fontana
Fontana was rural until Henry J. Kaiser built a steel mill there during World War II; the Hells Angels formed in 1948 when several small motorcycle clubs agreed to merge.
Q 13Which Inland Empire city's name became a running train-announcement gag on Jack Benny's radio show?
Rancho Cucamonga
Rancho Cucamonga was plain Cucamonga when Mel Blanc voiced the station announcer, and the gag grew so famous that a statue of Benny went up there.
Q 21Which Inland Empire city is home to the Lincoln Memorial Shrine and the mapping software firm Esri?
Redlands
Redlands got the shrine in 1932 from philanthropist Robert Watchorn, who built it in memory of his son, a pilot in the First World War.
Q 22Which Inland Empire city brands itself Horsetown USA and has horse trails instead of most sidewalks?
Norco
Norco riders can trot into town and tie up at hitching rails outside the shops, and since 2017 the city has housed the horses that pull Disneyland's streetcars.
Q 23Which Inland Empire city was named after the Danish town where Shakespeare set Hamlet?
Lake Elsinore
Lake Elsinore stands on the shore of Southern California's largest natural freshwater lake, which was originally known as Laguna Grande.
Q 14Which Inland Empire city is the hub of a wine country and hosts a yearly Balloon and Wine Festival?
Temecula
Temecula sits in a valley that won its own federal wine-region designation in 1984, thanks to cool ocean air that slips through gaps in the coastal mountains.
Q 15Which Inland Empire city, a Seventh-day Adventist hub, is one of the world's five Blue Zones?
Loma Linda
Loma Linda's long lives are credited to its Adventists, nearly half the population, many of whom are vegetarian and keep a Sabbath from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown.
Q 16Which Inland Empire city is nicknamed the Circle City after a boulevard once used for auto races?
Corona
Corona was renamed in 1896 for Grand Boulevard, a perfect circle nearly three miles around, where international road races ran in 1913, 1914 and 1916.
Q 17Which Inland Empire mountain town is home to the Snow Summit ski area and a solar observatory?
Big Bear Lake
Big Bear Lake became a winter resort when Snow Summit opened in 1952, and snow machines keep its slopes open in dry winters. Caltech began the observatory in 1968.
Q 18Which fault created the Cajon Pass and crosses Interstate 15 on its way through the Inland Empire?
San Andreas
The San Andreas Fault marks where the Pacific and North American plates slide past each other, and it runs along the base of the mountains on either side of the pass.
Q 19Which computer pioneer paid for the US Festival rock concerts held in the Inland Empire in 1982?
Steve Wozniak
Steve Wozniak, designer of two pioneering home computers, built an open-air venue for the shows at Glen Helen Regional Park and lost an estimated $12 million on each festival.
Q 20Which director named his 2006 film Inland Empire, starring Laura Dern, after the California region?
David Lynch
David Lynch wrote, shot, edited and scored the film himself, then promoted Dern for an Oscar by sitting on Hollywood Boulevard beside a live cow.
Q 24Which Inland Empire city, incorporated only in 1984, sits beside March Air Reserve Base?
Moreno Valley
Moreno Valley had fewer than 50,000 residents when it became a city and more than 200,000 by 2020. The airfield next door opened in 1918 to train military pilots.
Q 25Which desert city in the Inland Empire metro area marks the western end of Interstate 40?
Barstow
Barstow was named for William Barstow Strong, a president of the Santa Fe Railway, and its 1911 Harvey House depot is a stop for Amtrak trains.
Q 26Which salty lake on the Inland Empire's edge formed when the Colorado River flooded in 1905?
Salton Sea
The Salton Sea filled a dry basin after floodwater broke through an irrigation canal, and the river kept pouring in for two years before the breach was repaired.
Q 27Which guitar maker has built its American instruments in the Inland Empire since 1985 and runs its Custom Shop there?
Fender
Fender opened a small new factory in the region in 1985, months after CBS sold the company without its old Fullerton plant, and launched the Custom Shop there in 1987.
Q 28Which energy drink company, called Hansen Natural until 2012, moved to the Inland Empire in 1998?
Monster
Monster began in 1935 as a family firm selling juice to film studios, and it took its drink's name once energy drinks had become its biggest earner.
Q 29Which Inland Empire supermarket chain grew from a single Yucaipa market bought in 1936?
Stater Bros.
Stater Bros. takes its name from twins Cleo and Leo Stater, who bought the market from the man Cleo worked for.
Q 30Which desert covers the Inland Empire's High Desert cities of Victorville, Hesperia and Adelanto?
Mojave
The Mojave Desert stretches across the largest county in the contiguous United States, one bigger than New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island combined.