Kansas Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
96 free Kansas trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free Kansas trivia questions with answers. These Kansas trivia questions cover the whole Sunflower State, not just the Kansas City suburbs. You will start with the basics: the capital, the motto, the meadowlark and the cottonwood, the year Kansas became the 34th state. Then the questions head into the territory years, from the Kansas-Nebraska Act and Bleeding Kansas to Quantrill's raid on Lawrence, before running west along the cattle trails to Abilene, Ellsworth and Dodge City. There is plenty of twentieth-century Kansas too: Brown v. Board of Education in Topeka, Eisenhower's boyhood home, Amelia Earhart's Atchison, the aircraft plants that made Wichita the Air Capital, and the two Wichita start-ups that became Pizza Hut and White Castle. Sports fans get Naismith, the Jayhawks and Bill Snyder's Wildcats; road-trippers get Mount Sunflower, the geographic center of the lower 48, Big Brutus, the Cosmosphere and a salt mine 650 feet down. About a third are easy enough for a classroom on Kansas Day, a third are medium, and the rest will test people who grew up here. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and official Kansas sources, and each question shows the sentence that confirms it once you have answered.
30 of 96 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which comic-book hero grew up on a family farm in Kansas?
Superman
Superman was raised near fictional Smallville, Kansas, and fans in a real Kansas town later campaigned to rename it Smallville.
Q 02Which of these state nicknames belongs to Kansas?
Sunflower State
The Sunflower State takes its name from the wild native sunflower, a plant American Indians used for food thousands of years ago.
Q 03The violent 1850s struggle over whether the territory would allow slavery is remembered by what name?
Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas saw at least 56 documented political killings, a violent prelude to the Civil War that soon followed.
Q 04The 1854 Kansas–Nebraska Act repealed which earlier deal that had banned slavery north of a set latitude?
Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise had barred slavery north of 36°30′; repealing it let settlers vote on slavery, and both North and South sent settlers to Kansas.
Q 05Which Kansas town was burned in the August 1863 raid led by Confederate guerrilla William Quantrill?
Lawrence
Lawrence, founded in 1854 by New England settlers, was targeted as an antislavery stronghold and a base for Jayhawker raids into Missouri.
Q 06The 1954 Supreme Court case striking down school segregation was against which Kansas city's school board?
Topeka
Topeka's board kept black and white children in separate elementary schools, which an 1879 Kansas law allowed in cities of 15,000 or more.
Q 07Which Kansas town did President Dwight D. Eisenhower consider his hometown?
Abilene
Abilene was his home from 1892, and after he died in Washington in 1969 his body was returned there for burial at his presidential library.
Q 08Aviator Amelia Earhart was born in 1897 in which Kansas river town?
Atchison
She was born in her grandfather's house; he was a former judge and president of the local savings bank.
Q 09Kansas's highest natural point lies a short walk from which state's border?
Colorado
Colorado's line is close by; Kansas climbs so gradually from east to west that its 4,039-foot high point looks like the surrounding plains.
Q 10The geographic center of the 48 contiguous states lies near which small Kansas town?
Lebanon
Lebanon's claim comes from a 1918 survey that balanced a cardboard cutout of the country on a point; the true spot lies on a nearby farm.
Q 11The Flint Hills of eastern Kansas are famous for holding the densest remaining stretch of what ecosystem?
Tallgrass prairie
Tallgrass prairie survives there because the rocky soil was too shallow to plow, so settlers ran cattle instead of planting crops.
Q 12Which Kansas cowtown employed lawmen Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson?
Dodge City
Dodge City first boomed on buffalo hides after the Santa Fe railroad arrived in 1872, then took over the Texas cattle trade in 1876.
Q 13Texas longhorns worth a few dollars at home sold for many times more in Kansas, spurring drives along which trail?
Chisholm Trail
The Chisholm Trail led north through Indian Territory to Kansas railheads, where cattle were sold and shipped east by train.
Q 21Which Kansas town's Plaza theater claims to be the oldest operating movie theater in America?
Ottawa
Ottawa's claim surfaced in 2013, when local researchers found evidence that its building had been showing movies for over a century.
Q 22Cessna, Beechcraft and Hawker were merged under which Wichita-based company in 2014?
Textron Aviation
Boeing, by contrast, ended decades of Kansas manufacturing between 2012 and 2013.
Q 23Which restaurant chain was founded in Wichita in 1958 by two brothers with a $600 loan from their mother?
Pizza Hut
Dan and Frank Carney chose the name because their sign only had room for eight letters.
Q 14What is the Kansas state motto?
Ad astra per aspera
It means "To the stars through difficulties"; a bronze Kansa archer aiming at the North Star, titled Ad Astra, has topped the Capitol dome since 2002.
Q 15Which bird is the state bird of Kansas?
Western meadowlark
The western meadowlark is no true lark but a member of the New World blackbird and oriole family.
Q 16Which tree did Kansas designate as its official state tree in 1937?
Cottonwood
In hard winters on the Plains, people fed cottonwood to their horses, and Wyoming and Nebraska later made it their state tree too.
Q 17The Kansas state song is which American classic, written as a poem by a Smith County homesteader?
Home on the Range
Brewster Higley wrote it in the early 1870s as "My Western Home"; the state adopted it in 1947 and KU's band plays it after every home game.
Q 18Which reptile is the state reptile of Kansas?
Ornate box turtle
The ornate box turtle is protected under several state laws, yet cars remain one of its leading killers.
Q 19Which creature did Kansas make its state amphibian in 1994?
Barred tiger salamander
Kansas's state amphibian, the barred tiger salamander, lays its eggs in ponds but spends most of its life hidden in burrows underground.
Q 20Which immigrant group is credited with bringing hard winter wheat to Kansas in the 19th century?
German-Russian Mennonites
Miller Bernhard Warkentin imported seed from Ukraine to feed demand, and USDA crop explorer Mark Carleton went to Russia hunting for more varieties.
Q 24Which chain, credited as the world's first fast-food burger chain, was founded in Wichita in 1921?
White Castle
White Castle set chain-wide standards for cooking and staff cleanliness, so customers could count on the same burgers and service at every location.
Q 25Who founded the University of Kansas basketball program in 1898?
James Naismith
James Naismith, who invented basketball, is ironically the only Kansas coach with a losing record, 55–60.
Q 26Which university's teams are the Wildcats, wearing Royal Purple?
Kansas State
Kansas State opened in 1863 after Manhattan donated the Blue Mont College building and grounds to host the state's land-grant college.
Q 27Which coach arrived at Kansas State in 1989 and turned its football program into a No. 1-ranked team?
Bill Snyder
He retired in 2005, came back in 2009 and won the Big 12 again in 2012; the home field is now named for his family.
Q 28Which MLS club plays its home games on the Kansas side of Kansas City?
Sporting Kansas City
Sporting Kansas City began at Arrowhead Stadium in Missouri, crossed the state line in 2008 and opened its own Kansas stadium in 2011.
Q 29What is the nickname of Wichita State's athletic teams?
Shockers
Tradition has it the Shockers began in 1904 as the Wheatshockers, since players earned money shocking, or harvesting, wheat.
Q 30In L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel, what carries Dorothy's Kansas farmhouse to the Land of Oz?
A cyclone
A cyclone drops the house on the Wicked Witch of the East, whose shoes are silver in the book; the 1939 film reportedly made them ruby to show off Technicolor.