This Portland trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and covers the Oregon city from the 1845 coin toss that named it to Portlandia, Voodoo Doughnut and 'Keep Portland Weird': the rivers and bridges, Forest Park and the rose gardens, Powell's City of Books, the Trail Blazers, Timbers and Thorns, Mount Hood and Timberline Lodge, the Vanport flood, Nike's roots in the suburbs, and the Simpsons characters named after its streets. A handful of questions cover the older Portland in Maine that lent the city its name. It is written for locals who think they know Stumptown, transplants still learning it, and anyone running a Pacific Northwest round at trivia night. Easy questions cover the nicknames and landmarks; hard ones get into funiculars-worth of detail on bridges, mayors and lava fields. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference such as Wikipedia or an official site, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Asa Lovejoy lost the 1845 coin toss that named Portland, Oregon. What did he want to call it?
Boston
Pettygrove, from Portland, Maine, won two out of three tosses, and the copper cent they used is on display at the Oregon Historical Society Museum.
Q 02The coin used to name Portland, known as the Portland Penny, was minted in which year?
1835
It turned up in a safe deposit box that Lovejoy left behind, a decade older than the toss itself.
Q 03Portland sits at the confluence of the Columbia River and which other river?
Willamette
The city was first documented for Europeans in 1805 by Lewis and Clark, who found the Multnomah and Clackamas bands of Chinook people living there.
Q 04Portland's early nickname 'Stumptown' came from what?
Trees cut to build it
Before that the site was simply called 'The Clearing', and by its 1851 incorporation the town had just over 800 inhabitants.
Q 05Portland's 'Rose City' nickname dates to 1888, but in what year did the city make it official?
2003
Georgiana Pittock, wife of the Oregonian publisher, founded the Portland Rose Society in 1889, and the first official Rose Festival followed in 1907.
Q 06According to the 2020 census, Portland ranked where among US cities by population?
28th
It counted 652,503 residents, and its population had climbed by more than 90,000 between 2000 and 2014 alone.
Q 07How much of downtown Portland does Powell's flagship bookstore take up?
A full city block
Walter Powell founded it in 1971; the flagship has nine colour-coded rooms and more than 3,500 sections.
Q 08Mill Ends Park held a Guinness record as the world's smallest park. Roughly how wide is it?
2 feet
Columnist Dick Fagan planted flowers in an empty lamppost hole in 1948 and claimed a leprechaun colony lived there.
Q 09Portlandia is the second-largest copper repoussé work in the US after which one?
The Statue of Liberty
Raymond Kaskey based the trident-holding figure on the city seal, and it was floated up the Willamette on a barge.
Q 10Which two doughnuts did Voodoo Doughnut stop selling by 2006 after a warning from health officials?
NyQuil Glazed and Pepto-Crushed-Tums
The shop, opened in 2003 by 'Cat Daddy' Pogson and Tres Shannon, still performs legal weddings and sells its wares in pink boxes.
Q 11The 'Keep Portland Weird' slogan was borrowed from which other US city?
Austin
Music Millennium owner Terry Currier brought it north in 2003, and the mural stands across from Voodoo Doughnut in Old Town.
Q 12Forest Park, one of the largest urban forest reserves in the country, covers more than how many acres?
5,100
About 27 miles of the Wildwood Trail run through it, past Pittock Mansion and its view of five volcanic peaks.
Q 13The International Rose Test Garden in Washington Park was set up in 1917 to protect what?
European hybrid roses during WWI
It is the oldest continuously operating public rose test garden in the US, with more than 10,000 bushes of some 650 varieties.
Q 21The Steel Bridge, opened in 1912, is the only bridge in the world with what feature?
Double decks that lift independently
More than 600 MAX light-rail trips cross it each weekday, and it replaced an 1888 span that was the West Coast's first steel bridge.
Q 22Tilikum Crossing, opened across the river in 2015, is unusual among big US bridges because it bans what?
Private cars
Its name is Chinook Jargon for 'people', and it was the first new bridge over the river in the metro area since the Fremont in 1973.
Q 23The St. Johns Bridge, built in 1931, is a suspension bridge in which architectural style?
Gothic revival
Q 14Which architect designed the Portland Japanese Garden's Cultural Village, added in 2017?
Kengo Kuma
The garden opened in 1967 in Washington Park and now covers 12.5 acres and draws about 400,000 visitors a year.
Q 15The Trail Blazers won their only NBA championship in which year?
1977
Bill Walton led that team, and it kicked off an 814-game sellout streak, the longest in American major pro sports.
Q 16In the 1984 NBA draft the Trail Blazers picked Sam Bowie second overall, one spot ahead of which player?
Michael Jordan
The team repeated the pattern in 2007, taking Greg Oden ahead of Kevin Durant.
Q 17The Trail Blazers' 814 consecutive home sellouts, 1977 to 1995, set a record for what?
American major pro sports
It began in the 1977 championship season, decades before the arena was renamed the Moda Center; the Red Sox later ran a longer streak.
Q 18What does the Timbers' mascot Timber Joey do each time the team scores?
Chainsaws a slab off a log
He took over from Timber Jim in June 2008, three years before the club joined MLS.
Q 19The Timbers won the 2015 MLS Cup 2-1 against which club, thanks to the fastest goal in MLS Cup history?
Columbus Crew
Diego Valeri scored it; the club competes with Seattle and Vancouver for the Cascadia Cup.
Q 20The Portland Thorns' recognised supporters' group goes by what name?
Rose City Riveters
The Thorns won the very first NWSL championship in 2013 and set the league's attendance record of 25,218 at Providence Park in 2019.
Its green towers helped earn Portland the nickname 'Bridgetown', which it carried for many decades.
Q 24Portland lies on top of a dormant volcanic zone with what name?
Boring Lava Field
Mount Tabor, an extinct cinder cone in the city's southeast, rises to 636 feet.
Q 25Mount Hood, the peak that dominates Portland's eastern horizon on clear days, is how tall?
11,249 ft
It is Oregon's highest mountain, an active stratovolcano named in 1792 after British admiral Samuel Hood, and draws about 10,000 climbers a year.
Q 26Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood served as the exterior of the Overlook Hotel in which film?
The Shining
The Works Progress Administration built it during the Depression, and it offers the only year-round lift-served skiing in North America.
Q 27What destroyed Vanport, briefly Oregon's second-largest city, on Memorial Day 1948?
A river flood
A 200-foot section of railroad berm gave way at 4:05 p.m., 15 people died and 18,000 were left homeless; the site is now Delta Park and Portland International Raceway.
Q 28The college that refused to close after the Vanport flood and reopened downtown became which institution?
Portland State University
Vanport had been built in 1942 to house Kaiser shipyard workers, and about 40 percent of its residents were African American.
Q 29The most decorated ship for a single action in US naval history was built in Portland. What was it?
USS Liberty
Henry J. Kaiser's yards in Portland and Vancouver, Washington, turned out ships throughout the war.
Q 30The Great Fire of 1873 destroyed how many blocks of Portland?
Twenty
It caused $1.3 million in damage, yet the city still grew from 17,500 people in 1879 to 46,385 in 1890.