This Louisiana trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and covers the whole state, not just the French Quarter. It runs from the Louisiana Purchase, statehood and the Battle of New Orleans through Huey Long, Reconstruction, Bonnie and Clyde's last stand in Bienville Parish and Hurricane Katrina, then out into the geography that makes the state strange and wonderful: 64 parishes instead of counties, a 535-foot 'mountain', the Atchafalaya, a 24-mile bridge and a coast that loses land every day. Culture and food get their due too: Cajun and Creole roots, zydeco, the origins of gumbo, jambalaya, po' boys and Tabasco, plus the Saints, LSU's Death Valley, the Bayou Classic and famous Louisianans from Louis Armstrong to Britney Spears. Questions range from easy ones any Louisianan can answer to expert-level details about the Chinese Bandits and Saint Malo. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia or a primary source, and each question links to the page that confirms it. New Orleans and Mardi Gras have their own dedicated quizzes, so this one keeps the focus on the state as a whole.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital of Louisiana?
Baton Rouge
The city sits on the first natural bluff upriver from the Mississippi delta, which kept its business district safe from seasonal floods.
Q 02Louisiana is the only U.S. state whose county-equivalent subdivisions are called what?
parishes
The term comes from the French paroisse and dates to the colonial church-parish boundaries; Alaska, with its boroughs, is the only other state without counties.
Q 03Louisiana was named in honor of which French king?
Louis XIV
The explorer La Salle named the Mississippi drainage 'La Louisiane' in 1682; the -ana suffix roughly means 'relating to Louis'.
Q 04In what year did the United States buy the Louisiana Territory from France?
1803
Napoleon sold the territory after his army failed to retake Saint-Domingue (Haiti) and he abandoned plans for a Caribbean sugar empire.
Q 05Which U.S. president oversaw the Louisiana Purchase?
Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson only sent envoys to buy the port of New Orleans; the French offer of the entire territory caught him by surprise.
Q 06Louisiana joined the Union in 1812 as which state, in order of admission?
18th
It was the first state carved out of the Louisiana Purchase lands, entering less than a decade after the sale.
Q 07Which European power governed Louisiana from 1762 until it was secretly handed back to France in 1800?
Spain
The Spanish era brought the French refugees who became the Cajuns and the Canary Islander settlers known as Isleños.
Q 08Roughly what share of New Orleans was left underwater by Hurricane Katrina in 2005?
80%
Investigators blamed the worst of the flooding on engineering flaws in the federally built levees and floodwalls, not on the storm alone.
Q 09Which team did the New Orleans Saints beat in Super Bowl XLIV to win their first championship?
Indianapolis Colts
The 31-17 win in February 2010 was the first major professional sports title ever won by a New Orleans team.
Q 10Which LSU quarterback won the Heisman Trophy in 2019?
Joe Burrow
He was the second of LSU's three Heisman winners, bookended by Billy Cannon in 1959 and Jayden Daniels in 2023.
Q 11The French name of Louisiana's capital city literally translates to what?
red stick
In 1699 d'Iberville's expedition saw a red pole marking the hunting boundary between the Houma and Bayagoula peoples.
Q 12New Orleans' international airport was renamed in 2001 for the centennial of which musician's birth?
Louis Armstrong
A statue of the trumpeter greets travelers at the entrance to the airport's former terminal building.
Q 13Which stew's New Orleans variation is Louisiana's official state cuisine?
gumbo
It got a national boost when the U.S. Senate dining room put it on the menu to honor Louisiana senator Allen Ellender.
Q 21Roughly how long is the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the longest continuous bridge over water?
24 miles
Guinness split its record into two categories in 2011 after China's Jiaozhou Bay Bridge opened, keeping the Causeway as the 'continuous' champion.
Q 22Unlike the other 49 states, Louisiana's private law is rooted in which legal tradition?
civil law
Despite the popular claim, the Napoleonic Code was never in force there: it was enacted in 1804, a year after the U.S. bought the territory.
Q 23By what name is the Louisiana State Penitentiary, America's largest maximum-security prison, known?
Angola
The name comes from the antebellum Angola plantation on the site, once owned by the slave trader Isaac Franklin; inmates still farm its 28 square miles.
Q 14Louisiana produces roughly 90% of the world's supply of which food?
crawfish
The Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival each spring has been named one of the top food events in the country by USA Today.
Q 15Cajuns descend from French colonists the British expelled in the 1750s from which region?
Acadia
Most Cajun families trace back to roughly 50 households living at Port Royal, now Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, in 1671.
Q 16What was populist governor and senator Huey Long's famous nickname?
the Kingfish
Long built the nation's tallest capitol and a modern highway system, and was poised for a 1936 presidential run when he was assassinated.
Q 17How strong was Hurricane Katrina by the time it made landfall in Louisiana on August 29, 2005?
Category 3
It had peaked as a Category 5 with 175 mph winds over the Gulf the day before, but the levee failures made the weaker landfall catastrophic anyway.
Q 18Which city, founded in 1714, is the oldest permanent European settlement in Louisiana?
Natchitoches
It was set up to trade with the Spanish in Texas and to block their advance; its sister city across the border is Nacogdoches.
Q 19Driskill Mountain, Louisiana's highest natural point, rises to roughly what elevation?
535 feet
Only Florida and Delaware have lower high points; a pile of rocks marks the summit in Bienville Parish.
Q 20How many county-equivalent subdivisions is Louisiana divided into?
64
Most are governed by an elected Police Jury, a colonial-era body whose members are called jurors.
Q 24Poverty Point, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in northeastern Louisiana, is what kind of place?
a prehistoric earthwork
Its mounds and ridges were built by hunter-gatherers whose culture peaked around 1500 BC, long before farming reached the region.
Q 25Which outlaw duo was ambushed and killed by a posse near Gibsland, Bienville Parish, in May 1934?
Bonnie and Clyde
The six-man posse mixed former Texas Rangers, Dallas deputies and the local Bienville Parish sheriff, and the groups barely trusted each other.
Q 26Which Shreveport radio show gave early exposure to Hank Williams and a young Elvis Presley?
Louisiana Hayride
Presley's first appearance on the show in October 1954 got a tepid response, but he was still signed to a year's contract.
Q 27Who was the first woman ever elected governor of Louisiana?
Kathleen Blanco
Her single term (2004-2008) was defined by Hurricane Katrina; she chose not to seek re-election.
Q 28Whom did Edwin Edwards face in the 1991 runoff remembered for 'Vote for the Crook' stickers?
David Duke
Even President George H. W. Bush endorsed the Democrat Edwards over the former Klan leader; Edwards later served eight years in federal prison for racketeering.
Q 29Some researchers estimate that coastal Louisiana loses land equal to how many football fields every day?
30
Levees that block sediment, logging canals and oil-industry channels all let salt water eat inland; the state lost about 1,800 square miles between 1932 and 2010.
Q 30The Battle of New Orleans was fought 15 days after which peace treaty ending the War of 1812 was signed?
Treaty of Ghent
News of the peace had not yet crossed the Atlantic; Andrew Jackson's outnumbered force routed the British assault in about half an hour.