Phoenix, Arizona
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48 free Phoenix, Arizona trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Phoenix is the fifth-most populous city in the United States and the biggest state capital by far, a grid of wide streets laid over canals the Hohokam dug two thousand years ago. It was named by an Englishman who saw a city rising from the ruins of an older civilisation, grew on cotton, cattle, citrus, climate and copper, and then exploded after the Second World War once air conditioning made the summers survivable. These 48 questions cover the whole story: Jack Swilling's irrigation company, the 1881 charter signed by John C. Fremont, the dam Theodore Roosevelt dedicated, the 1920 skyscraper, Motorola's arrival, Sandra Day O'Connor and the first female mayor. There are sports questions on the Diamondbacks' 2001 World Series, the Cardinals' move from St. Louis and the Mercury's three WNBA titles, plus geography on the Sonoran Desert, the Salt River, Piestewa Peak and the world's largest municipal park. Easy questions stick to Sky Harbor, Chase Field and the Valley of the Sun; the hardest ask about the first sheriff, the first newspaper and the pope who created the diocese. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss. Play it solo or print it for an Arizona trivia night.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Phoenix is the county seat of which Arizona county?
Maricopa
Maricopa County was carved out of Yavapai County in 1871, when Phoenix was a farming settlement only a few years old, and the young town became its seat.
Q 02Where did Phoenix rank among US cities by population at the 2020 census?
Fifth
Fifth, after trading places with Philadelphia: Phoenix slipped to sixth in the 2010 census, then edged back ahead in 2020 by fewer than 5,000 residents.
Q 03Phoenix lies in the northern reaches of which desert?
Sonoran
Sonoran Desert is the only place the saguaro cactus grows wild, because the giant cactus can't survive long freezes; Phoenix sits near the desert's northern edge.
Q 04Which mountain town lost the Arizona territorial capital to Phoenix for good in 1889?
Prescott
Prescott had already lost the capital to Tucson once and won it back before the legislature voted in 1889 to move it to Phoenix for good.
Q 05Which director premiered his first feature film in Phoenix?
Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg was 17 when his father rented a Phoenix theatre for one night in 1964 to show Firelight, a film that cost about $500 to make; ticket sales left a profit of one dollar.
Q 06Which Confederate veteran founded an irrigation and canal company near Phoenix in 1867?
Jack Swilling
Jack Swilling, prospecting at Wickenburg, saw the valley could feed the mining camps; the ex-Confederate wanted to call the settlement Stonewall, after the general, but another name won.
Q 07Which ancient people dug roughly 135 miles of irrigation canals in the Phoenix area?
Hohokam
Hohokam is an O'odham word usually translated as "those who have gone": the farmers had left centuries before the 1860s settlers cleared out their old canals and founded Phoenix.
Q 08Cotton, cattle, citrus and climate were four of Arizona's Five C's; what was the other?
Copper
Copper earned the star at the centre of the Arizona state flag: the state has long mined more of the metal than any other in the country.
Q 09What nickname for the Phoenix area began as a 1930s tourism slogan?
The Valley of the Sun
The Valley of the Sun was coined in the 1930s by a local advertising agency working for the Chamber of Commerce, to sell winter visitors on a desert valley until then named after its river.
Q 10Which waterway runs westward through Phoenix, though its bed is often dry?
Salt River
Salt River water is held back by a chain of dams and diverted into canals east of the city, so the bed through Phoenix usually runs dry except after heavy storms.
Q 11Arizona became a state, with Phoenix as capital, on which holiday in 1912?
Valentine's Day
Valentine's Day 1912 ended a long wait: President Taft had vetoed statehood over a clause letting voters recall judges, so Arizona cut it, joined the Union, and restored it later that year.
Q 12Which Phoenix airport did the city buy in 1935?
Sky Harbor
Sky Harbor was nicknamed The Farm when the city bought it in 1935, because of its isolated, rural setting.
Q 13Phoenix's record 122 °F heat did what at its airport in 1990?
Grounded flights
Grounded flights: the hot, thin air cut lift so much that airlines halted takeoffs, and most flew again later that afternoon once the temperature slipped back under 120 °F.
Q 21The Arizona Diamondbacks play at which downtown ballpark, famous for its outfield pool?
Chase Field
Chase Field opened in 1998 with a retractable roof and air conditioning to beat the desert heat. Its pool sits beyond the right-centre fence, and the Cubs' Mark Grace hit the first home run into it that May.
Q 22Which team did the Diamondbacks beat in the 2001 World Series?
New York Yankees
New York Yankees closer Mariano Rivera led Game 7 in the ninth until Luis Gonzalez's bloop single won it. Arizona, in only its fourth season, became the fastest expansion team to win a World Series.
Q 23The Arizona Cardinals moved to Phoenix in 1988 from which city?
St. Louis
Q 14Which company brought high-tech industry to Phoenix in the late 1940s with a military electronics laboratory?
Motorola
Motorola sent research chief Daniel Noble to set up a Phoenix electronics laboratory after the war, and it grew into the company's semiconductor division, the start of the valley's chip industry.
Q 15Ernesto Miranda's 1963 arrest by Phoenix police led to which famous police routine?
Reading suspects their rights
Reading suspects their rights dates from 1966, when the Supreme Court threw out Miranda's confession; Arizona retried him without it and he was convicted again.
Q 16Which name did Phoenix's Piestewa Peak carry before it was renamed for a soldier killed in Iraq in 2003?
Squaw Peak
Squaw Peak was renamed by the state board weeks after Lori Piestewa was killed in Iraq in 2003; the federal naming board, which normally waits five years after a death, followed in 2008.
Q 17Which Phoenix resident became the first woman on the US Supreme Court in 1981?
Sandra Day O'Connor
Sandra Day O'Connor struggled to find a law firm that would hire a woman as an attorney after Stanford, so she started out working for a California county attorney for no pay.
Q 18Phoenix and most of Arizona skip daylight saving time; which part of the state does change its clocks?
The Navajo Nation
The Navajo Nation changes its clocks because it stretches into Utah and New Mexico, which do; the Hopi Reservation it surrounds stays on Arizona time all year.
Q 19Which of these is one of Phoenix's 15 urban villages?
Maryvale
Maryvale began in the 1950s as developer John F. Long's planned community of affordable homes, which he named after his wife, Mary; Scottsdale, Glendale and Chandler are separate cities.
Q 20Which small African parrot, descended from escaped pets, now lives wild in flocks across Greater Phoenix?
Rosy-faced lovebird
Rosy-faced lovebird pairs nest under the dead fronds of untrimmed palms or in holes in tall cacti. On the hottest days flocks crowd around air-conditioning vents to keep cool.
St. Louis was the club's second home after Chicago, where a wartime shortage of players forced it to merge with the Pittsburgh Steelers for the 1944 season as Card-Pitt.
Q 24Which Tempe venue hosted Super Bowl XXX in 1996?
Sun Devil Stadium
Sun Devil Stadium was first awarded the 1993 Super Bowl, but the NFL moved that game to California after Arizona voters rejected a Martin Luther King holiday; their approval in 1992 brought this one to Tempe.
Q 25Which guard played all 20 of her WNBA seasons for the Phoenix Mercury?
Diana Taurasi
Diana Taurasi won all three of the Mercury's titles by her 2025 retirement, and sat out only one summer: in 2015 her Russian club paid her to skip the WNBA season and rest.
Q 26The Coyotes began play in 1996 after which NHL team moved to Phoenix?
Winnipeg Jets
Winnipeg Jets money troubles sent the Canadian club to the desert in 1996. In 2024 the Coyotes' hockey assets were sold to create a new NHL team in Utah, leaving Arizona without one.
Q 27Which Phoenix preserve, at over 16,000 acres, is one of America's largest city-run parks?
South Mountain
South Mountain Park began as a bargain: in 1924 the city bought its first 13,000 acres for $17,000, a little over a dollar an acre.
Q 28Papago Park is home to the Phoenix Zoo and which attraction opened in 1939?
Desert Botanical Garden
Desert Botanical Garden grew from a campaign by Swedish botanist Gustaf Starck, who found allies by posting a sign reading "Save the desert". It now shows more than 50,000 plants.
Q 29The Phoenix Art Museum's architect Alden B. Dow was a student of which famous figure?
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright taught Dow at his Taliesin studio in Wisconsin in the summer of 1933. Wright later built his own winter home and studio, Taliesin West, in nearby Scottsdale.
Q 30Barry Goldwater gave the Heard Museum 437 of which carved figures?
Hopi kachina dolls
Hopi kachina dolls began as gifts, not collectibles: they are carved for girls and presented at ceremonies, where they teach each child the spirit beings the dolls portray.