Salt Lake City
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50 free Salt Lake City trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Salt Lake City was laid out in 1847 by settlers who had crossed more than a thousand miles of plains and mountains to reach a high desert valley beside an inland sea. Within a generation it was a territorial capital, a stop for travelers bound for California and the headquarters of a worldwide church. Its broad streets, its mountain backdrop and the lake that shares its name still set it apart from other American cities. This quiz covers the founding years and the people who shaped them, the landmarks around Temple Square, the natural history of the Great Salt Lake, and the fortnight in 2002 when the Winter Games came to town. It also takes in basketball, soccer and the city's newest pro team, a few local foods, and the films, shows and songs that have used the city as a backdrop. It is written for locals, visitors and anyone getting ready for a trivia night in Salt Lake. Every question comes with a short explanation, so you pick up the story behind each answer as you play.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01When pioneers founded Salt Lake City in July 1847, the valley still officially belonged to which country?
Mexico
Mexico gave up the region early the next year, when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo handed the United States the land that became Utah.
Q 02Which fast-food chain's first franchise opened near Salt Lake City in 1952, selling a recipe from another state?
Kentucky Fried Chicken
Kentucky Fried Chicken owes its bucket to the same Utah franchisee, Pete Harman, who introduced the cardboard tub in 1957.
Q 03Which everyday road device did Salt Lake City policeman Lester Wire build an early electric version of in 1912?
Traffic light
The traffic light he built was a yellow wooden box with a pitched roof, so like a birdhouse that locals nicknamed it Wire's pigeon house.
Q 04Which Disney Channel movie about a basketball captain turned singer was filmed at an actual Salt Lake City campus?
High School Musical
High School Musical used East High, a working public school, and by summer 2007 the building was drawing 40 to 50 fans a day.
Q 05Which 1980 American team lit the cauldron at Salt Lake City's 2002 Olympics?
Men's ice hockey
Men's ice hockey heroes of the Miracle on Ice were summoned by their captain, Mike Eruzione, and the whole squad lit the flame together.
Q 06The Utah Jazz moved to Salt Lake City in 1979 from which city, the source of the team's musical name?
New Orleans
New Orleans kept the team for only five seasons, as arena troubles and an 11% amusement tax, the highest in the nation, pushed it west.
Q 07Which first for American women did teacher Seraph Young achieve in Salt Lake City on February 14, 1870?
Voting under equal suffrage
Voting under equal suffrage reached Utah Territory just two days before her ballot, and Wyoming's women, enfranchised earlier, had not yet gone to the polls.
Q 08Brigham Young is said to have wanted Salt Lake City's streets wide enough for what to turn around?
An ox team and wagon
An ox team and wagon needed room to swing about, the common explanation runs, so the streets were drawn 132 feet wide around square blocks of ten acres each.
Q 09Which object fell from the Angel Moroni statue atop the Salt Lake Temple during a 2020 earthquake?
A trumpet
A trumpet dropped from the statue on the tallest spire when a magnitude 5.7 quake, centered near Magna, shook the valley that March.
Q 10What makes the Great Salt Lake, on Salt Lake City's doorstep, far saltier than the ocean?
It has no outlet
It has no outlet, so rivers bring minerals in and only evaporation takes water out, which is why some call it America's Dead Sea.
Q 11Which team beat the Utah Jazz in back-to-back NBA Finals in 1997 and 1998, clinching the second in Salt Lake City?
Chicago Bulls
Chicago Bulls guard Michael Jordan settled the 1998 series on the Jazz's own floor, sinking a 20-foot jumper with 5.2 seconds left.
Q 12Which artificial organ was first permanently implanted in a human at Salt Lake City's University of Utah in 1982?
Heart
Heart recipient Barney Clark, a dentist the university's medical school had once turned down as a student, lived 112 days on the Jarvik-7.
Q 13Which birds are honored by a Temple Square monument in Salt Lake City for devouring crop-eating crickets in 1848?
Seagulls
Seagulls arrived after the settlers prayed for help, later accounts say, and the California gull went on to become Utah's state bird.
Q 21Which NHL team's players and coaches were handed to a new Salt Lake City franchise in 2024?
Arizona Coyotes
Arizona Coyotes players, coaches and draft picks went to the Utah Jazz's owner in place of an expansion draft, while the old club suspended operations.
Q 22Which point guard spent his whole career in Salt Lake City and retired owning the NBA records for assists and steals?
John Stockton
John Stockton missed only four games in his first 13 seasons, and in 1995 he passed Magic Johnson as the league's all-time assists leader.
Q 23Which Utah Jazz forward, nicknamed the Mailman, won two NBA Most Valuable Player awards while playing in Salt Lake City?
Karl Malone
Q 14Brigham Young's Salt Lake City home is named for which emblem of industry that sits on its roof?
Beehive
The beehive carved atop the 1854 house stood for hard work and cooperation, and the building was also his residence as governor of Utah Territory.
Q 15Which metal is the main product of the Bingham Canyon Mine, the vast open pit southwest of Salt Lake City?
Copper
Copper has been dug from the canyon since 1906, leaving a pit more than two miles wide and about three-quarters of a mile deep.
Q 16In which sport at Salt Lake City's 2002 Winter Olympics did a judging scandal lead to a second gold medal being awarded?
Figure skating
Figure skating officials gave Canada's Jamie Salé and David Pelletier a second gold after a French judge said she had been pressured to favor the Russian pair.
Q 17Which dessert brand, honored by Utah's Senate in 2001, appeared on a souvenir pin at Salt Lake City's 2002 Olympics?
Jell-O
Jell-O won the honor after Utahns rallied to take back the per-capita eating title that Des Moines, Iowa, had snatched from them in 1999.
Q 18Which animals, ferried over by boat in 1893, roam Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake by the hundreds?
Bison
Bison numbering just twelve made the 1893 crossing, and the herd they founded, kept at 500 to 700 head, is among the oldest publicly owned ones in the country.
Q 19Which future presidential candidate was hired in 1999 to rescue Salt Lake City's scandal-hit 2002 Winter Olympics?
Mitt Romney
Mitt Romney left the private equity firm Bain Capital to take over after a bribery scandal and a budget shortfall threatened the Games.
Q 20The Great Salt Lake beside Salt Lake City is a shrunken remnant of which vast Ice Age lake?
Bonneville
Lake Bonneville was nearly as large as Lake Michigan until much of it burst out through Red Rock Pass in Idaho in a single cataclysmic flood.
Karl Malone took the award in 1997 and 1999, then left after 18 years with the Jazz for one final season with the Los Angeles Lakers.
Q 24From which Illinois city, abandoned in 1846, did Brigham Young's followers set out on the trail to Salt Lake City?
Nauvoo
Nauvoo had been the Latter-day Saints' main settlement since 1839, and about 14,000 of its residents set out to find a new home in the West.
Q 25Which coast-to-coast link was completed in Salt Lake City in October 1861, making the Pony Express obsolete within days?
Telegraph line
The telegraph line took 27,500 poles and 2,000 miles of iron wire to build, and the Pony Express officially shut down two days after it was finished.
Q 26Which winter weather pattern traps polluted air over Salt Lake City when high pressure stalls over the Great Basin?
Temperature inversion
Temperature inversion can hold thick smog in the valley for days or weeks at a time, now and then giving the area the worst air-pollution readings in the nation.
Q 27Salt Lake City holds the world's largest library devoted to which research field, open free of charge downtown?
Genealogy
Genealogy researchers there can draw on 1.3 million rolls of microfilmed records, the fruit of a worldwide filming effort that began in 1938.
Q 28Which Spanish word begins the name of Salt Lake's Major League Soccer club, winners of the 2009 MLS Cup?
Real
Real means royal, a title King Alfonso XIII granted to Spanish clubs such as Madrid and Betis, and the Utah club's first owner chose it hoping for a partnership with Real Madrid.
Q 29Which baseball comedy about a boy called Smalls and a feared dog was shot in and around Salt Lake City?
The Sandlot
The Sandlot passed Utah off as the San Fernando Valley of 1962, filming in Midvale and Ogden as well as the capital.
Q 30Which California band recorded a 1965 song titled Salt Lake City after playing a Utah amusement park year after year?
The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys played Lagoon Amusement Park at least twelve times, and Utah was among the first places outside California to air their records.