Palm Springs Trivia
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44 free Palm Springs trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Palm Springs trivia quiz covers the desert resort from the people who lived beside its hot springs for two thousand years, through the health seekers, stagecoach stops and railroad checkerboard of the 1800s, to the Hollywood hideaways, tennis clubs and glass-walled houses that made it famous. You will find questions on the mountains that shelter the city, the wind farm at its doorstep, the record heat, the ride up to alpine forest in ten minutes, and the festivals, parades and Thursday street fair that fill the calendar. There are questions on the celebrity neighbourhoods and the architects who built for the stars, on the entertainer who became mayor and started an annual film event, on the movies that used the city as a backdrop, and on the community's more recent history as an LGBTQ destination with a first-of-its-kind city council. Easy questions suit a house-party or a Modernism Week gathering; the harder ones on dates, names and numbers will challenge locals and long-time snowbirds. Every answer has been checked against encyclopaedia entries and local institutions, and each question shows its explanation and source after you answer.
30 of 44 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Palm Springs lies in which California county?
Riverside
Riverside County: part of Palm Springs is Agua Caliente tribal land, and development there took off only after a 1959 law allowed long-term leases.
Q 02Which Native American people originally inhabited the Palm Springs area?
Cahuilla
Cahuilla: in 1876 President Ulysses S. Grant set aside land there as their Agua Caliente reservation, and parts of it lie within the city today.
Q 03Tahquitz Canyon, on the western edge of Palm Springs, is best known for what feature?
A 60-foot waterfall
A 60-foot waterfall: Tahquitz Falls plunges about 60 feet, and in the 1920s the canyon served as an outdoor theatre for the Desert Plays, one based on the legend of Tahquitz.
Q 04Why is Palm Springs' reservation land laid out as a checkerboard?
Alternating sections were granted to a railroad
Alternating sections were granted to a railroad: in the 1860s the government gave the Southern Pacific every odd-numbered square mile along its line, leaving the even ones for the tribe.
Q 05Which native palm grows wild around Palm Springs?
Fan
Fan: the California fan palm is the only palm native to the western US, so the Coachella Valley's date palms all had to be brought in from abroad.
Q 06By the 1870s, what did Palm Springs serve as on the road between Los Angeles and Arizona?
A stagecoach station
A stagecoach station: stages bound for Arizona stopped there, and in the 1880s San Francisco lawyer John McCallum founded the Palm Valley colony that grew into the resort.
Q 07Whose 1947 Palm Springs house has a piano-shaped pool?
Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra: he asked the architect for a grand Georgian mansion, but when shown a modern design alongside it, he chose the modern house instead.
Q 08Which mountain range rises directly west of Palm Springs?
San Jacinto Mountains
San Jacinto Mountains: in 1935 engineer Francis Crocker, on a hot day in Banning, gazed at their snowy summit and proposed a ride up Chino Canyon, which opened in 1963.
Q 09Which major fault runs along the northeast side of the Coachella Valley near Palm Springs?
San Andreas Fault
San Andreas Fault: in one telling of a local legend, the rumblings and quakes around Palm Springs come from Tahquitz, a spirit living in the canyon above town.
Q 10Which 1985 comedy filmed at dinosaurs near Palm Springs?
Pee-wee's Big Adventure
Pee-wee's Big Adventure: Knott's Berry Farm artist Claude Bell began building the dinosaurs in 1964 to draw customers to his Wheel Inn cafe.
Q 11The Palm Springs ride up Chino Canyon is the world's largest example of what?
Rotating aerial tramway
Rotating aerial tramway: its cars slowly turn as they climb, and because only the first of its five towers could be reached by road, builders used helicopters to put up the other four.
Q 12Which national park is a short drive from Palm Springs?
Joshua Tree
Joshua Tree: activist Minerva Hoyt's preservation campaign led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to protect the area as a national monument in 1936.
Q 13Which desert lake near Palm Springs formed by accident in 1905?
Salton Sea
Salton Sea: with no natural outlet, its water escapes only by evaporation, which leaves the salt behind, so the lake is now saltier than the ocean.
Q 21Which actor bought singer Dinah Shore's former Palm Springs home in 2014?
Leonardo DiCaprio
Leonardo DiCaprio: in 2011 a developer planned up to 50 adaptations of the house's modernist design across the Hamptons.
Q 22Which Chinese president met Barack Obama in 2013 at Sunnylands, the Annenberg estate near Palm Springs?
Xi Jinping
Xi Jinping: Obama held the two-day meeting there for its relaxed, secluded setting, far from the formality of Washington summits.
Q 23In which downtown theatre did the Fabulous Palm Springs Follies, with its 55-and-over cast, perform?
The Plaza Theatre
The Plaza Theatre: the troupe became the subject of Still Kicking, a short documentary that was nominated for an Oscar.
Q 14Which architect designed the 1946 Kaufmann Desert House, the mostly-glass modernist landmark?
Richard Neutra
Richard Neutra: he built it for department store owner Edgar Kaufmann, and after later owners remodelled it, Brent Harris spent years in the 1990s restoring Neutra's design.
Q 15Which photographer took 'Poolside Gossip', the 1970 picture shot beside the Kaufmann Desert House pool?
Slim Aarons
Slim Aarons: his picture made the house famous, and one of the women lounging in it, socialite Nelda Linsk, owned the house.
Q 16Which natural feature did Albert Frey build into his hillside Palm Springs house?
A boulder
A boulder: Frey had the glass cut to fit around a giant rock that separates living and sleeping areas, and he left the house to the Palm Springs Art Museum when he died in 1998.
Q 17Which architect designed the butterfly-roofed Twin Palms tract for the Alexander Construction Company?
William Krisel
William Krisel: to make modernism affordable, he gave builders varied roof lines and orientations, so tract houses with similar floor plans looked quite different.
Q 18Which two actors opened Palm Springs' Racquet Club in 1934?
Charles Farrell and Ralph Bellamy
Charles Farrell and Ralph Bellamy: their club began as just two tennis courts, then grew into a desert resort where movie people stayed and socialised.
Q 19Which entertainer became mayor of Palm Springs in 1988 and later won a seat in Congress?
Sonny Bono
Sonny Bono: the singer-turned-restaurateur ran for mayor after running into red tape over his restaurant, and in 1994 he was elected to the House.
Q 20Which annual Palm Springs event is held each January?
The Film Festival
The Film Festival: rising COVID-19 cases forced organisers to cancel its 2022 edition, the second year in a row it was called off.
Q 24Which 26-foot Seward Johnson statue has stood in downtown Palm Springs since 2021?
Forever Marilyn
Forever Marilyn: recreating the subway-grate scene from The Seven Year Itch, it stood downtown from 2012 to 2014 and returned in 2021 after tourism group PS Resorts bought it.
Q 25Palm Springs Weekend, Warner Bros.' 1963 Easter-vacation comedy, was modelled on which 1960 spring-break hit?
Where the Boys Are
Where the Boys Are: studio boss Jack Warner wanted a similar film, so he sent writer Earl Hamner Jr. to Palm Springs over Easter to poke around for a story.
Q 26Who plays Nyles, the wedding guest stuck in a time loop, in the 2020 comedy Palm Springs?
Andy Samberg
Andy Samberg: at Sundance, Neon and Hulu reportedly paid $17,500,000.69 for the film, topping the festival's record sale by 69 cents.
Q 27Palm Springs Art Museum, founded in 1938, originally carried what name?
Palm Springs Desert Museum
Palm Springs Desert Museum: it began with natural science exhibits and Native American artifacts, and later renamed itself to reflect its turn to art.
Q 28Which late rapper appeared as a projection at Coachella in 2012?
Tupac Shakur
Tupac Shakur: the so-called hologram was really Pepper's ghost, a stage illusion used in theatres since the 19th century, updated with modern projection.
Q 29Which general's Desert Training Center covered the whole region during World War II?
Patton
Patton: the Army created the vast desert training ground in 1942 to prepare American soldiers to fight Germany's Afrika Korps in the North African desert.
Q 30In 2017 Palm Springs elected what kind of council?
The first entirely LGBTQ council
The first entirely LGBTQ council: believed to be a US first, it formed when a transgender woman and a bisexual woman won seats, in a city with one of the highest shares of same-sex households.