St. Louis Trivia
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120 free St. Louis trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
66 free St. Louis trivia questions with answers. St. Louis is a city that keeps turning up in other people's stories: the fair that gave America the ice cream cone, the Olympics with the wooden-legged gymnast, the ballpark where a 3-foot-7 pinch hitter drew a walk, the bar where Chuck Berry played once a month into his eighties. This St. Louis trivia quiz gathers all of it in one place. The questions cover the founding and the Arch, the 1904 World's Fair and Olympics, the Cardinals, Blues and Rams, the food (toasted ravioli, gooey butter cake, Provel, concretes), Anheuser-Busch and the Clydesdales, Forest Park and its free institutions, the neighborhoods, the architecture and the famous natives. Roughly a third are easy warm-ups, a third are for people who have lived here a while, and the rest are for the friend who insists on explaining the Great Divorce at parties. Every answer has been checked against a real source and each question shows where it came from, so you can settle the argument with the evidence rather than a listicle. Use it for a trivia night, a road-trip warm-up, or a solo test of how well you know the Gateway City.
30 of 120 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01St. Louis, founded by French fur traders in 1764, was named after which French monarch?
The crusader Louis IX
The crusader Louis IX was canonised as Saint Louis in 1297, which is why the city carries a saint's name rather than a plain royal one.
Q 02The fur traders who founded St. Louis in 1764 had set out from which French colonial city?
New Orleans
New Orleans was home to Pierre Laclède, who headed upriver in August 1763 with his stepson Auguste Chouteau, chose a bluff safe from floods, and laid out the new town's streets on the New Orleans plan.
Q 03How tall is the Gateway Arch?
630 feet
630 feet is also the distance between its legs at ground level, so the Arch is exactly as wide as it is tall; in a 150 mph wind its top is designed to sway by up to 18 inches.
Q 04Which Finnish-American architect designed the Gateway Arch?
Eero Saarinen
Eero Saarinen beat a field that included his own father, Eliel, in the 1948 competition, but died of a brain tumour in 1961, before construction of his Arch had even begun.
Q 05The Gateway Arch tram is half elevator, half which ride?
Ferris wheel
Ferris wheel cars gave designer Dick Bowser his answer: he drew up the tram in two weeks, though it did not open until 1967, well after the Arch was finished in October 1965.
Q 06The Gateway Arch is clad in which material?
Stainless steel
Stainless steel covers the Arch, and it is no mere decoration: the monument has no skeleton inside, so its inner and outer skins carry the load themselves.
Q 07Which mathematical curve does the Gateway Arch follow?
A catenary
A catenary is the curve a hanging chain makes; the Arch's is a weighted version of it turned upside down, which keeps the whole structure in compression.
Q 08To fit the Gateway Arch's final section in 1965, what did engineers have to do to its two legs?
Jack them apart
Jack them apart is what it took: jacks pushing with more than 500 tons of force held the legs open while the last piece was lowered in on 28 October 1965, after a truss had braced them on the way up.
Q 09Which world's fair did St. Louis host in 1904?
The Louisiana Purchase Exposition
The Louisiana Purchase Exposition celebrated the 1803 land deal a year late, in 1904, and still drew close to 20 million visitors to the city's largest park.
Q 10Which food is most famously said to have been popularised at the 1904 St. Louis fair?
The ice cream cone
The ice cream cone had been patented months earlier, but the fair gave it its legend: a waffle seller is said to have rolled his pastry into a cone when the ice cream stall beside him ran out of containers.
Q 11Which soft drink was introduced to a national audience at the 1904 St. Louis fair?
Dr Pepper
Dr Pepper had been poured in Waco, Texas, since 1885, a year before Coca-Cola existed, yet it took the 1904 fair to put it in front of the whole country.
Q 12Cass Gilbert designed the only palace of the 1904 St. Louis fair built to last; which institution occupies it today?
The Saint Louis Art Museum
The Saint Louis Art Museum's home was the fair's Palace of Fine Arts, the only major building there put up as a permanent structure; every other grand palace was built to be temporary.
Q 13The giant pipe organ that played at the 1904 St. Louis fair ended up in a department store in which city?
Philadelphia
Q 21Who borrowed the Cardinals' 'birds on the bat' logo from church table decorations?
Branch Rickey
Branch Rickey was the speaker at a Presbyterian church in Ferguson, Missouri, where Allie May Schmidt had made cardboard redbirds for the tables. Her father drew up the design, and it reached the jerseys in 1922.
Q 22Which nickname was given to the rowdy Cardinals team that won the 1934 World Series?
The Gashouse Gang
The Gashouse Gang won Game 7 in Detroit 11-0, and the home crowd pelted Joe Medwick with fruit and bottles until the commissioner ordered him out of the game.
Q 23Which rival did the Blues beat outdoors at Busch Stadium in the 2017 Winter Classic?
Blackhawks
Philadelphia merchant John Wanamaker bought the organ in 1909 and needed thirteen freight cars to haul it from St. Louis; its builder had already gone bankrupt on the cost.
Q 14Which sport vanished from the Olympics after the 1904 St. Louis Games and did not return until 2016?
Golf
Golf's 1904 champion, Canada's George Lyon, was 46. In 1908 he was the only entrant left after a British boycott, and he refused the gold medal he was offered by default.
Q 15Gold medals first appeared at the 1904 St. Louis Olympics; what had the champions of 1896 received instead?
Silver medals
Silver medals went to the winners at Athens in 1896 and a lesser medal to the runners-up, with no prize at all for third place; St. Louis introduced gold, silver and bronze for the top three.
Q 16American gymnast George Eyser won six medals at the 1904 Games despite what?
Having a wooden left leg
Having a wooden left leg went back to his youth, when a train ran over him. He still won gold on the parallel bars, the vault and the rope climb.
Q 17The 1904 Olympic marathon winner Thomas Hicks was helped along by his handlers with what?
Strychnine and brandy
Strychnine and brandy, with raw eggs, were his handlers' idea of a pick-me-up. Hicks ran the last miles in agony and was practically carried across the finish line.
Q 18Cuban runner Andarín Carvajal finished fourth in the 1904 marathon despite doing what mid-race?
Napping after eating spoiled apples
Napping after eating spoiled apples was not the race's only detour: another runner, Len Taunyane, was chased off the course by wild dogs.
Q 19Which Yankee's failed steal handed the Cardinals the 1926 World Series?
Babe Ruth
Babe Ruth had walked with two out in the ninth and the Yankees a run down, then broke for second and was thrown out, giving the Cardinals their first World Series title.
Q 20Which Cardinals pitcher posted a modern-record 1.12 ERA in 1968?
Bob Gibson
Bob Gibson's season was so dominant, with pitchers on top everywhere, that baseball lowered the mound the following year.
The Blackhawks lost 4-1 on a rink laid over the Cardinals' field, with Vladimir Tarasenko scoring twice in the third period to break a 1-1 tie.
Q 24The St. Louis Blues hockey team is named after a song by which composer?
W. C. Handy
W. C. Handy's 'St. Louis Blues' dates from 1914. The hockey team reached the Stanley Cup Final in each of its first three seasons and was swept every time.
Q 25Which team did the Blues beat to win their first Stanley Cup in 2019?
Bruins
Boston Bruins, the club that had swept the Blues in the 1970 Final. St. Louis had been last in the whole league in early January, then won the deciding game 4-1 in Boston.
Q 26Which 1980s pop song became the Blues' unofficial victory anthem during their 2019 Cup run?
'Gloria' by Laura Branigan
'Gloria' by Laura Branigan caught on after a few Blues watched an NFL playoff game in a bar on a road trip, where the locals kept demanding it. The team won its next game and played it after every win.
Q 27Which NFL team won Super Bowl XXXIV while based in St. Louis?
The Rams
The Rams held on when linebacker Mike Jones stopped Tennessee's Kevin Dyson one yard short of the goal line on the final play, a moment known simply as 'The Tackle'.
Q 28Which owner moved St. Louis's NFL team to Los Angeles in 2016?
Stan Kroenke
Stan Kroenke, a Missouri developer, had held a share of the team since it arrived in 1995. In 2021 he and the NFL agreed to pay $790 million to settle the lawsuit St. Louis brought over the move.
Q 29Toasted ravioli, a St. Louis appetizer 'toasted' in name only, is actually cooked how?
Breaded and deep-fried
Breaded and deep-fried: legend says a 1940s cook dropped a ravioli into hot oil by accident, and more than one of the city's Italian restaurants still claims the mistake as its own.
Q 30Which St. Louis treat is said to have begun when a 1930s baker got the proportions of his ingredients wrong?
Gooey butter cake
Gooey butter cake, legend says, was a German-American baker's botched coffee cake that came out dense and sticky. More than one St. Louis bakery family now claims the mistake.