130 free Seattle trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Seattle trivia quiz has 130 questions on the Emerald City, from the Denny Party landing at Alki Point in 1851 to the Sphere-era boom of the 2020s. The easy questions are for anyone who has visited or watched Frasier: the tower built for the 1962 World's Fair, the market where they throw the fish, the coffee chain that started there, the mountain on the horizon and the nickname of the football crowd. The harder ones are for locals and history buffs: the glue pot that started the Great Fire, the ton of gold on the S.S. Portland, why the streets in Pioneer Square were raised, the billboard about turning out the lights, and which street is the only one to run unbroken from Elliott Bay to Lake Washington. The quiz covers the city's history, geography and weather, its landmarks and neighbourhoods, its music from Jackson Street jazz to Sub Pop and grunge, its companies from Boeing and UPS to Microsoft, Amazon, Costco and REI, its film and TV connections, and its sports teams. If you want to go deeper on the teams, we also have separate Seattle Seahawks, Seattle Mariners and Seattle Kraken quizzes, plus one on Sleepless in Seattle. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for the city, its landmarks, its companies and its teams before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Try our Portland, San Francisco and Washington State quizzes next.
30 of 130 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Seattle is named after a chief of which two Native American peoples?
The Duwamish and Suquamish
Doc Maynard, one of the settlement's founders, pushed for the name; the chief's own name was siʔaɫ in Lushootseed.
Q 02Where did the Denny Party land on November 13, 1851?
Alki Point
They arrived from Portland on the schooner Exact in a rainstorm, and moved across the bay after a miserable winter.
Q 03What was the name of the schooner that carried the Denny Party to their landing site?
Exact
They had come from Illinois via Portland, Oregon, stopping in Astoria on the way.
Q 04What did the settlers first call the settlement at present-day Pioneer Square?
Duwamps
The rival settlement across the bay called itself New York Alki, from a Chinook word meaning roughly by and by.
Q 05The Chinook word "alki" in New York Alki means roughly what?
By and by, or someday
Charles Terry and John Low stayed at the original landing site and gave it the optimistic name in 1853.
Q 06Which European explorer was the first to visit the area, in May 1792?
George Vancouver
He was charting the Pacific Northwest for the Royal Navy and named Puget Sound after his lieutenant Peter Puget.
Q 07Puget Sound is named after whom?
A lieutenant on Vancouver's expedition
Vancouver originally applied the name only to the waters south of the Tacoma Narrows.
Q 08Which nickname officially replaced "Queen City" as Seattle's epithet in 1982?
The Emerald
The city seal still carries the date 1869 and Chief Seattle in profile.
Q 09Which Seattle street is the supposed origin of the term "Skid Row"?
Yesler Way
Timber was skidded down the hill to Henry Yesler's sawmill; the area's later dereliction may have given the term its meaning.
Q 10What accidentally started the Great Seattle Fire of 1889?
An overheated glue pot in a carpentry shop
It burned less than a day but took the entire central business district, and the city rebuilt in brick.
Q 11Why does the Seattle Underground exist beneath Pioneer Square?
Streets were raised one to two storeys after the 1889 fire
Pedestrians at first climbed ladders between the new street level and the old sidewalks below.
Q 12Which ship docked in Seattle in July 1897 with its famed "ton of gold"?
S.S. Portland
Seattle became the outfitting and supply point for the Klondike miners; clothing and feeding them proved the real gold mine.
Q 13Which 1909 fair largely shaped the layout of the University of Washington campus?
The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition
Q 21Where is Boeing's wide-body aircraft plant in the Seattle area?
Everett
Renton builds the narrow-body jets; Paine Field in Everett opened as a passenger airport in 2019.
Q 22Where did the first Starbucks open on March 30, 1971?
Pike Place Market
It initially sold coffee beans, not drinks; founders Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl and Gordon Bowker were later bought out by Howard Schultz.
Q 23From which city did Microsoft move to the Seattle suburbs in 1979?
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Bill Gates and Paul Allen had founded it in 1975 to sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800; it is now in Redmond.
It capped the Gold Rush boom that had also funded Nordstrom, Eddie Bauer and UPS.
Q 14Which delivery giant was founded in Seattle in 1907 with a $100 loan?
UPS
Nineteen-year-old James E. Casey called it the American Messenger Company.
Q 15What early labour milestone did Seattle see in 1919?
A general strike
It followed a shipbuilding boom that had made Seattle something of a company town during World War I.
Q 16Who became the first female mayor of a major American city, in Seattle in 1926?
Bertha Knight Landes
Nearly a century later, Katie Wilson became only the third woman to hold the office, in 2026.
Q 17Which world's fair was held in Seattle in 1962?
Century 21 Exposition
Nearly 10 million people came, and unlike most fairs of its era it made a profit.
Q 18What did a famous early-1970s billboard ask the last person leaving Seattle to do?
Turn out the lights
Boeing's crisis over the oil shocks and the 747's costs sent many people away to look for work.
Q 19In which year did Boeing move its headquarters from Seattle to Chicago?
2001
It later moved again to Arlington, Virginia, but remains the region's largest private employer.
Q 20Who founded the aircraft company that bears his name in Seattle in 1916?
William E. Boeing
The company is now the largest US exporter by dollar value.
Q 24In which Seattle suburb did Jeff Bezos found Amazon in 1994?
Bellevue
It started as an online bookshop; the headquarters later moved from North Beacon Hill to South Lake Union.
Q 25Amazon's move to which neighbourhood set off a historic construction boom?
South Lake Union
Almost 10,000 apartments were completed in 2017 alone, nearly twice the 2016 total.
Q 26Where is Costco's worldwide headquarters?
Issaquah
Its Kirkland Signature label is named after the company's former home in another eastern suburb.
Q 27What did Nordstrom sell exclusively when it opened in 1901?
Shoes
John W. Nordstrom and Carl F. Wallin's chain only began selling clothing in 1963.
Q 28How is the outdoor retailer REI, founded by Lloyd and Mary Anderson, structured?
As a consumers' co-operative
Unlike other outdoor stores it sells no hunting or fishing equipment.
Q 29Which airline is headquartered in the city of SeaTac, next to the airport?
Alaska Airlines
The city of SeaTac itself was named after the airport's nickname.
Q 30The city of SeaTac took its name from what?
The airport's nickname
Sea-Tac is about 14 miles south of downtown Seattle and is operated by the Port of Seattle.