San Diego
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144 free San Diego trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
20 free San Diego trivia questions with answers. Think you know San Diego? Put your knowledge to the test with our comprehensive 144-question trivia quiz covering everything from the city's rich history to its iconic landmarks and vibrant culture. Whether you're a local, planning a visit, or just a geography enthusiast, this quiz will challenge what you know about America's Finest City.
30 of 144 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The San Diego Zoo keeps the largest colony outside Australia of which animal?
Koalas
Koalas arrived in 1925, when the children of Sydney sent two as a gift to the children of San Diego; the zoo now grows its own eucalyptus to feed the colony that followed.
Q 02Which county borders San Diego County to the northwest, along the Pacific coast?
Orange County
Orange County sits between San Diego County and Los Angeles, so the coastal drive north to L.A. runs straight through it; Riverside County lies inland to the north and Imperial County to the east.
Q 03Which Cameron Crowe film follows a San Diego teenager sent on tour with a rock band by Rolling Stone?
Almost Famous
Almost Famous is Crowe's own story: raised in San Diego, he was reviewing records for an underground paper there at 13 and writing for Rolling Stone while still in his teens.
Q 04After the 1972 Republican convention was pulled from San Diego, Mayor Pete Wilson coined which defiant slogan?
America's Finest City
America's Finest City began as a proclamation: Wilson declared the convention week 'America's Finest City Week' after the event moved to Miami Beach, and the boast stuck.
Q 05Which president returned Mission San Diego de Alcalá to the Catholic Church?
Lincoln
Lincoln signed the proclamation in May 1862, in the thick of the Civil War, ending 16 years in which the US Army had occupied the old mission; by then its church was in ruins.
Q 06Which Coronado air station, where Glenn Curtiss trained the Navy's first pilot, is the 'Birthplace of Naval Aviation'?
North Island
North Island was an empty sand flat when Glenn Curtiss opened a flying school there in 1911 and invited the military to use it; a House committee resolution made the title official in 1963.
Q 07Which crooner helped found the Del Mar racetrack and greeted the first fans at its gate in 1937?
Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby co-founded the turf club behind the track north of San Diego; a year after it opened, Del Mar staged the Seabiscuit–Ligaroti match race before 20,000 people and a national radio audience.
Q 08Which historic San Diego district is known for Victorian architecture and nightlife?
Gaslamp Quarter
The Gaslamp Quarter's 90-odd Victorian-era buildings had sunk into a strip of peep shows and adult bookshops before owners banded together in the 1970s to save it as a historic district.
Q 09Which sailing trophy did the San Diego Yacht Club defend off the city in 1988, 1992 and 1995?
The America's Cup
The America's Cup came to San Diego in 1987 and stayed eight years: Dennis Conner kept it in 1988 with a catamaran, a second San Diego boat held it in 1992, and New Zealand sailed off with it in 1995.
Q 10Which beach community lies at the foot of Point Loma, south of the San Diego River?
Ocean Beach
Ocean Beach, at the foot of Point Loma, guards its independent streak: residents have fought chain stores since the 1970s, and its Dog Beach lets dogs run off-leash around the clock.
Q 11Why is San Diego called the 'Birthplace of California'?
California's first European settlement
California's first European settlement took root on Presidio Hill in 1769, when a Spanish expedition raised a fort and a mission above the bay; the chain of 21 missions spread north from there.
Q 12What is the predominant climate type in San Diego?
Mediterranean
Mediterranean is the usual label for San Diego's warm, dry summers and mild temperatures all year, though the city gets so little rain that some classifications file it as semi-arid instead.
Q 13What former aircraft carrier is now a popular museum located on Navy Pier in San Diego?
USS Midway
Q 21Which San Diego–Tijuana border crossing is the busiest land crossing in the Western Hemisphere?
San Ysidro Port of Entry
San Ysidro Port of Entry handles tens of millions of people a year but no trucks: since 1983 every freight truck has been sent a few miles east to the Otay Mesa crossing.
Q 22San Diego International Airport holds what distinction among US airports?
Busiest with a single runway
Busiest with a single runway: about 660 acres hemmed in three miles from downtown leave San Diego's airport one 9,400-foot strip for every takeoff and landing.
Q 23By what name was San Diego International Airport long known?
The USS Midway was built for World War II but commissioned a week after it ended; it went on to serve in Vietnam and as a flagship in Operation Desert Storm before opening as a museum on Navy Pier.
Q 14Which explorer first claimed San Diego Bay for Spain in 1542, initially naming it San Miguel?
Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo
Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, sailing the San Salvador, entered the bay in 1542, claimed it for Spain and named it San Miguel; the name was replaced sixty years later.
Q 15Which famous ocean-research institution, part of UC San Diego, sits in the La Jolla neighbourhood?
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Scripps Institution of Oceanography began in 1903 as a marine biology station working out of the Hotel del Coronado's boathouse; within a few years, with Scripps family money, it had settled in La Jolla.
Q 16Which unexpected filling distinguishes San Diego's California burrito?
French fries
French fries, tucked in with carne asada and cheese, went into the California burrito at a San Diego taco shop in the 1980s; several shops claim to have been first, and nobody is sure which was.
Q 17Which friar founded Mission San Diego de Alcalá, the first California mission?
Junípero Serra
Junípero Serra founded Mission San Diego de Alcalá in July 1769, the first link in the mission chain he pushed up the California coast; Pope Francis made him a saint in Washington, D.C., in 2015.
Q 18Which 1857 brick house, now a San Diego museum, is billed as America's most haunted?
Whaley House
The Whaley House stands on ground where 'Yankee Jim' Robinson was hanged for stealing a boat, and heavy footsteps said to be his are its best-known ghost story.
Q 19Which Spanish explorer gave San Diego its name in 1602, honoring Saint Didacus of Alcalá?
Sebastián Vizcaíno
Sebastián Vizcaíno anchored in the bay in November 1602 and renamed it San Diego after his flagship and the feast day of San Diego de Alcalá, Saint Didacus.
Q 20At the 2020 census, which Texas city ranked one place above San Diego?
San Antonio
San Antonio counted 1.43 million residents to San Diego's 1.39 million; twenty years earlier the order was the other way round, with San Diego seventh and San Antonio ninth.
Lindbergh Field
Lindbergh Field was the airport's name from its 1928 opening, honoring Charles Lindbergh, whose Spirit of St. Louis was built in San Diego; the San Diego International Airport name came later.
Q 24Which Spanish governor founded the Presidio of San Diego in 1769?
Gaspar de Portolá
Gaspar de Portolá, governor of the Californias, founded the Presidio of San Diego in 1769; the fort on Presidio Hill was the first European settlement in present-day California.
Q 25Why did Mission San Diego move six miles inland from the presidio in 1774?
Better farmland
Better farmland and water: after a drought the friars moved up the San Diego River in 1774. A year later an uprising burned the new mission, which was rebuilt on the same spot.
Q 26Mission San Diego was the southern anchor of which historic California mission trail?
El Camino Real
El Camino Real, the Royal Road, tied the 21 missions together from San Diego north to Sonoma; since 1906 cast-metal mission bells on shepherd's-crook posts have marked the route for travellers.
Q 27Which future governor of Mexican California lost San Diego's first election for alcalde to Juan María Osuna?
Pío Pico
Pío Pico was governor by 1846, when American troops invaded; unable to raise an army, he fled south into Mexico, then came home two years later to live as a private citizen in Los Angeles.
Q 28Which 1840 memoir of the hide and tallow trade describes its author's months curing hides at San Diego?
Two Years Before the Mast
Two Years Before the Mast was written by Richard Henry Dana, a Harvard student who shipped out as a common sailor after measles weakened his eyes; he spent months curing hides on the beach at Point Loma.
Q 29Which 1846 battle, fought in a valley now inside San Diego's city limits, was the bloodiest of the California campaign?
San Pasqual
San Pasqual, December 6, 1846: Californio lancers cut up Kearny's trail-worn dragoons, who were then pinned on a hilltop until Kit Carson slipped out barefoot at night to fetch help from San Diego.
Q 30Which Californio commander led the lancers who mauled Kearny's dragoons near San Diego in December 1846?
Andrés Pico
Andrés Pico led the lancers against dragoons worn down by a 2,000-mile march; a month later he and John C. Frémont signed the Treaty of Cahuenga, which ended the fighting in California.