US State Capitals Trivia for Kids
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50 free US State Capitals Trivia for Kids trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This US state capitals trivia for kids quiz is built for children aged roughly eight to twelve, and for parents and teachers helping them learn the fifty capitals. The first thirty questions simply ask 'What is the capital of...?' for the states kids most often mix up, from Georgia and Colorado to Wyoming and Vermont, always with the state's biggest or best-known cities as the wrong answers so the quiz really tests the capital, not the famous city. The last twenty are fun-fact questions that make the capitals stick: which one has the most people, which has the fewest, which is highest above sea level, which sits on a Pacific island, which are named after presidents or explorers, and which was briefly the capital of the whole United States. Older kids and adults can go on to our main US state capitals trivia quiz or the hard US state capitals trivia quiz. Every answer has been checked against each city's Wikipedia article, and each explanation adds one more fact worth remembering.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital of Georgia?
Atlanta
Atlanta owes its start to a railroad: it was founded in 1837 at the spot where a new line was to end, and its first name was simply Terminus.
Q 02What is the capital of Colorado?
Denver
Denver was started by gold prospectors in 1858 and named after the governor of Kansas Territory, because the land was part of Kansas at the time.
Q 03What is the capital of Texas?
Austin
Austin's townspeople once fought to keep it the capital: when the government moved away in 1842 they refused to let the state's records leave, and three years later the government came back.
Q 04What is the capital of Tennessee?
Nashville
Nashville is nicknamed Music City: the Grand Ole Opry, a radio show of country music, began there in 1925 and is still on the air.
Q 05Which state capital gives a famous 500-mile race its name?
Indianapolis
Indianapolis, the capital of Indiana, lent its name to the Indianapolis 500, first run in 1911 on a track built two years earlier so the city's carmakers could test their cars.
Q 06What is the capital of Utah?
Salt Lake City
Salt Lake City was founded in 1847 by Brigham Young and his Mormon followers, who had travelled west looking for a place to practise their religion in peace.
Q 07What is the capital of Alabama?
Montgomery
Montgomery was the first capital of the Confederacy in 1861. Almost a century later Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat there, setting off the famous Montgomery bus boycott.
Q 08What is the capital of Arkansas?
Little Rock
Little Rock became the capital in 1821, taking over from Arkansas Post, the river settlement where the territory's government had first set up two years earlier.
Q 09What is the capital of Iowa?
Des Moines
Des Moines took over as Iowa's capital from Iowa City in 1857, the same year the growing town dropped the word 'Fort' from the front of its name.
Q 10What is the capital of Illinois?
Springfield
Springfield won the job thanks to nine unusually tall state lawmakers nicknamed the Long Nine, who pushed through the vote to move the capital there in the 1830s.
Q 11What is the capital of Mississippi?
Jackson
Jackson was burned so badly by Union soldiers in 1863 that it earned the nickname Chimneyville, because chimneys were almost all that was left standing.
Q 12What is the capital of Michigan?
Lansing
Lansing was little more than forest when lawmakers made it the capital in 1847, moving out of Detroit. At first the new town was simply called Michigan.
Q 13Which state capital was settled in one day in 1889?
Oklahoma City
Oklahoma City had about 10,000 settlers by nightfall on April 22, 1889, the day the government opened the land and homesteaders rushed in to stake their claims.
Q 21What is the capital of Virginia?
Richmond
Richmond took over from Williamsburg in the middle of the Revolutionary War, and within two years British raiders led by Benedict Arnold had attacked and looted the new capital.
Q 22What is the capital of North Dakota?
Bismarck
Bismarck was renamed in 1873 after Germany's leader, Otto von Bismarck, in the hope that Germans would put money into the railroad being built through the town.
Q 23What is the capital of South Dakota?
Pierre
Pierre is pronounced 'peer', not the French way, even though it was named after a fur trader of French descent, Pierre Chouteau.
Q 14What is the capital of Oregon?
Salem
Salem once lost the job: the capital was moved to the town of Corvallis, but only briefly, and it soon came back to Salem for good.
Q 15What is the capital of Rhode Island?
Providence
Providence was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, who had been forced out of Massachusetts for his religious views and wanted a place where people could worship as they chose.
Q 16What is the capital of Washington?
Olympia
Olympia got the job in 1853, when the first governor of the new Washington Territory named the little port his capital. No other city has held it since, not even Seattle.
Q 17What is the capital of West Virginia?
Charleston
Charleston had to win the job: for years West Virginia's capital moved back and forth between it and the city of Wheeling, until voters settled the matter in 1877.
Q 18What is the capital of Wyoming?
Cheyenne
Cheyenne sprang up in 1867 as the Union Pacific Railroad reached the spot, and every July it still celebrates its Wild West past with Frontier Days, one of the biggest rodeos in America.
Q 19What is the capital of Idaho?
Boise
Boise comes from the French for 'wooded'. French-speaking fur trappers are said to have given the name to its tree-lined river, a welcome sight in dry country, and the city borrowed it.
Q 20What is the capital of Pennsylvania?
Harrisburg
Harrisburg began as Harris's Ferry, a trading post and river crossing set up on the Susquehanna by an English trader named John Harris, and it became the capital in 1812.
Q 24What is the capital of Missouri?
Jefferson City
Jefferson City was built to be the capital, on a site picked in 1821 near the middle of the new state, and the town was laid out by a son of the frontiersman Daniel Boone.
Q 25What is the capital of Kentucky?
Frankfort
Frankfort lies between Louisville and Lexington, two bigger rivals that each tried to take the capital for themselves and failed.
Q 26What is the capital of Connecticut?
Hartford
Hartford used to share the job: for generations Connecticut had two capitals, Hartford and New Haven, and lawmakers moved between them until Hartford became the only one in 1875.
Q 27What is the capital of Maryland?
Annapolis
Annapolis is where George Washington gave up command of the army in 1783, handing back his power in the State House once the Revolutionary War was won.
Q 28What is the capital of Delaware?
Dover
Dover was planned on the orders of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, who was also in charge of the land that became Delaware.
Q 29What is the capital of New Hampshire?
Concord
Concord means agreement, and the town was given the name in 1765 to mark the peaceful end of a long and bitter quarrel over its boundaries.
Q 30What is the capital of Maine?
Augusta
Augusta began in 1628 as a trading post of the Pilgrims' Plymouth Colony, whose traders came up the Kennebec River to deal in furs.