Las Vegas Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
60 free Las Vegas trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
55 free Las Vegas trivia questions with answers. Las Vegas has more stories per square mile than any city in America, and this quiz gets to most of them: the Spanish name that means 'the meadows', the Mormon fort, the 1905 railroad land auction, the year Nevada legalised gambling, the mobsters who built the first Strip resorts, and the tycoons who replaced them with volcanoes, pyramids and dancing fountains. There are questions on Elvis, the Rat Pack, Liberace and Siegfried & Roy, on the Golden Knights, Raiders and Aces, and on the films from Ocean's Eleven to The Hangover that made the city a character. It starts with things any visitor knows and gets to details only a local or a Vegas obsessive will have: which casino has no apostrophe and why, how many people the MGM Grand fire killed, which resort had a lion in the lobby, and what the airport is now called. It works for a bachelor-party bus, a themed trivia night or a solo test of how much you really know about Sin City. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and reference sources, and each question shows its explanation and citation after you answer.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does the Spanish name 'Las Vegas' mean in English?
The meadows
Las Vegas means 'The meadows' in Spanish: a vega is a fertile lowland, and the name described the grassy ground around the valley's natural springs on the Old Spanish Trail.
Q 02Las Vegas is the county seat of which Nevada county?
Clark
Las Vegas is the seat of Clark County, created in 1909 and named for William A. Clark, the senator whose railroad founded the town; most Strip casinos sit in the county outside city limits.
Q 03Which unincorporated town holds most of the Las Vegas Strip, which lies outside the city?
Paradise
Most of the Strip lies in Paradise, an unincorporated town casino owners created in December 1950 to block annexation, and its taxes, by the city of Las Vegas.
Q 04Guy McAfee nicknamed Las Vegas Boulevard's casino row after which road in Los Angeles?
Sunset Strip
Guy McAfee ran the Pair-o-Dice Club, the first casino on the highway, and borrowed the name from Hollywood.
Q 05In what year did Nevada legalise casino gambling and cut divorce residency to six weeks?
1931
Nevada legalised casino gambling on March 19, 1931 and cut divorce residency to six weeks that same year, just as Hoover Dam construction began bringing thousands of workers to the area.
Q 06Las Vegas was founded as a city in 1905 when land was auctioned beside what?
The railroad tracks
The railroad tracks: on May 15, 1905 the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad auctioned 110 acres beside its new line, creating the townsite that became downtown Las Vegas.
Q 07Which religious group built a fort at Las Vegas in 1855 on the road between Salt Lake City and California?
Mormons
Mormons from Salt Lake City built the adobe fort in 1855 as a mission and way station; they abandoned it in 1857, and part of it survives as Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort State Historic Park.
Q 08Downtown's Fremont Street is named after which American explorer?
John C. Frémont
Fremont Street honours John C. Frémont, the explorer who camped at the Las Vegas springs in May 1844; the street had the city's first hotel, the Hotel Nevada, in 1906.
Q 09The Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign was designed in 1959 by whom?
Betty Willis
Betty Willis designed the sign in 1959 for Western Neon; she never copyrighted it, calling it her gift to the city, so the design appears freely on merchandise.
Q 10The white circles across the top of the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign represent what?
Silver dollars
They are a nod to Nevada's nickname, the Silver State.
Q 11The Hoover Dam sits on the Colorado River on the border between Nevada and which other state?
Arizona
The Hoover Dam spans Black Canyon on the Colorado River between Nevada and Arizona; Franklin Roosevelt dedicated it on September 30, 1935, more than two years ahead of schedule.
Q 12What is the name of the vast reservoir created by the Hoover Dam?
Mead
Lake Mead, named for Reclamation commissioner Elwood Mead, is the largest reservoir in the United States by capacity and stretches up to 112 miles when full.
Q 13The town built to house Hoover Dam workers, about 30 miles from Las Vegas, is called what?
Boulder City
Boulder City was built by the federal government from 1931 to house Hoover Dam workers; President Hoover ordered dam work started six months early, so many workers first lived in tents at Ragtown.
Q 21The Bellagio, opened in 1998, is themed after a village on which Italian lake?
Como
Bellagio is named for the town on Lake Como; Steve Wynn opened it in 1998 on the site of the Dunes, with fountains whose 1,214 nozzles shoot water up to 460 feet.
Q 22What claim is made for the beam shining from the Luxor pyramid's tip?
The most powerful man-made light on Earth
The Luxor's Sky Beam is billed as the most powerful man-made light on Earth, at about 42.3 billion candela; the 30-storey pyramid opened in October 1993.
Q 23The Eiffel Tower replica at Paris Las Vegas is built at what scale?
One half
Q 14Which mobster took over the building of the Flamingo, which opened in December 1946?
Bugsy Siegel
Bugsy Siegel took over the Flamingo from Billy Wilkerson, founder of The Hollywood Reporter, and its budget ballooned from about $1 million to $6 million before the December 26, 1946 opening.
Q 15The Flamingo's mob builder was shot dead in June 1947 in whose Beverly Hills mansion?
Virginia Hill's
His partners believed he or his girlfriend had skimmed about $1 million from the Flamingo's construction budget.
Q 16Which billionaire moved into the Desert Inn in 1966, refused to leave, and simply bought the hotel?
Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes arrived at the Desert Inn in November 1966, bought it in 1967 when asked to leave, then added the Sands, Frontier, Silver Slipper, Castaways and Landmark, pushing the mob out of ownership.
Q 17Which casino resort's name deliberately has no apostrophe?
Caesars Palace
Caesars Palace, opened in 1966 by Jay Sarno with a Teamsters pension-fund loan, omits the apostrophe so that every guest is a Caesar rather than a visitor to one Caesar's palace.
Q 18Which stuntman crashed jumping the fountains of a Roman-themed Strip resort on December 31, 1967?
Evel Knievel
Evel Knievel tried to clear the Caesars Palace fountains, about 141 feet, on December 31, 1967; he came up short, tumbled into the Dunes car park and crushed his pelvis.
Q 19Steve Wynn's 1989 Strip megaresort was famous for what free attraction out front?
An erupting volcano
Its success set off the 1990s building boom; the resort closed in July 2024 to be rebuilt as Hard Rock Las Vegas.
Q 20Which magic duo headlined at Wynn's volcano-fronted resort from 1990 until a tiger attack ended their show?
Siegfried & Roy
Siegfried & Roy, the German-born illusionists, opened at the Mirage in 1990 and had given 5,750 shows there when a white tiger mauled Roy Horn on stage on October 3, 2003.
It is a one half scale replica, rising about 540 feet against the original's roughly 1,080; the resort also copies the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre and the Paris Opera House.
Q 24When the MGM Grand opened in 1993 with more than 5,000 rooms, its dominant theme was which film?
The Wizard of Oz
The MGM Grand opened in December 1993 with an Emerald City entrance themed on The Wizard of Oz; then the largest hotel in the world, it shed the Oz décor in a renovation begun in 1996.
Q 25The 1980 fire at the original MGM Grand (the Horseshoe since 2022) killed how many people?
85
Most of the 85 died from smoke inhalation in the hotel tower, and the disaster led to sweeping changes in fire safety codes. The property became Bally's in 1986 and the Horseshoe in 2022.
Q 26The Excalibur was the world's largest hotel when it opened in 1990. What is its theme?
A medieval castle
Its designers toured European castles for ideas, and it held the size record only until the MGM Grand opened three years later.
Q 27The Venetian was built on the site of which demolished Rat Pack-era casino?
The Sands
Sheldon Adelson opened it in 1999 with canals and gondola rides; the old resort had hosted Sinatra and the Rat Pack in its Copa Room.
Q 28At 1,149 feet, what distinction does the spire at The Strat hold?
Tallest observation tower in the United States
At 1,149 feet the Strat is the tallest observation tower in the United States; in the Western Hemisphere only Toronto's CN Tower is a taller observation tower. The top holds a revolving restaurant and thrill rides.
Q 29The Fremont Street Experience, opened in 1995, is best known for what overhead feature?
A giant LED canopy
Its overhead feature is a giant LED canopy, Viva Vision, arching 90 feet over four blocks of Fremont Street; it opened in 1995 with incandescent bulbs and was converted to LEDs in 2004.
Q 30Vegas Vic, the neon cowboy erected in 1951, waves from the front of which downtown casino?
The Pioneer
Vegas Vic was erected on the Pioneer Club in 1951; the winking, cigarette-smoking cowboy broke from text-only neon signs and became a symbol of the city, outliving the casino, which closed in 1995.