Wild West Trivia
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118 free Wild West trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
62 free Wild West trivia questions with answers. The Wild West of the movies is mostly invention, and the real thing is stranger. Wyatt Earp finished his days trying to sell his story in Hollywood, Bat Masterson died at his desk as a New York sportswriter, and the most famous stagecoach robber in California was afraid of horses and always ran off on foot. This quiz covers the outlaws and lawmen everyone has heard of, from Billy the Kid and Jesse James to Butch Cassidy and Doc Holliday, alongside the cattle trails, boomtowns, railroads and Native leaders that shaped the frontier: Deadwood, Dodge City, the Chisholm Trail, Sitting Bull, Geronimo and the Homestead Act. It starts with easy warm-ups and builds to genuinely hard questions about laundry marks, meridians and eight-hour buffalo-shooting contests. Every answer was checked against reference and primary sources rather than frontier legend, so it works for a saloon-themed party, a classroom, or settling arguments at pub trivia.
30 of 118 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Billy the Kid was born under what name?
Henry McCarty
Billy the Kid was born Henry McCarty in New York around 1859; he later used the aliases Henry Antrim and William H. Bonney.
Q 02Which sheriff shot and killed Billy the Kid at Fort Sumner in 1881?
Pat Garrett
Pat Garrett, sheriff of Lincoln County, shot the Kid in Pete Maxwell's darkened bedroom at Fort Sumner on 14 July 1881.
Q 03Billy the Kid rose to fame as one of the Regulators in which New Mexico conflict?
Lincoln County War
The Lincoln County War (1878) pitted the Regulators, formed to avenge the murder of English rancher John Tunstall, against the Murphy-Dolan faction.
Q 04The only authenticated photograph of Billy the Kid sold at auction in 2011 for how much?
$2.3 million
The 1880 tintype of Billy the Kid fetched $2.3 million at a Denver auction in June 2011; the buyer was businessman William Koch.
Q 05The 1881 Gunfight at the O.K. Corral actually took place in a vacant lot fronting which thoroughfare?
Fremont
The fight happened on Fremont Street, in a narrow lot beside C. S. Fly's photography studio, six doors west of the corral's rear entrance.
Q 06Roughly how many shots were fired during the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral?
30
About 30 shots were fired in roughly 30 seconds; Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers died, while an unarmed Ike Clanton ran.
Q 07The outlaw faction the Earps fought at the O.K. Corral was known by what name?
The Cochise County Cowboys
The Cochise County Cowboys were a loose gang of rustlers and smugglers; Tombstone's 1881 ordinance against carrying guns in town was aimed at them.
Q 08Which Earp brother was the town's city marshal and deputized Doc Holliday on the day of the gunfight?
Virgil
Virgil Earp was Tombstone's city marshal and a deputy US marshal; he was maimed in a December 1881 ambush, and Morgan's murder followed.
Q 09Before becoming a gambler and gunman, Doc Holliday earned a degree in what?
Dentistry
He set up a practice in Griffin, Georgia, but tuberculosis, the disease that had killed his mother, drove him west.
Q 10Doc Holliday died in his bed at a hotel in which Colorado spa town?
Glenwood Springs
Doc Holliday died of tuberculosis at the Hotel Glenwood in Glenwood Springs on 8 November 1887, aged 36.
Q 11Whose 1896 fight against Bob Fitzsimmons did Wyatt Earp referee, calling a foul many thought faked?
Tom Sharkey
Earp refereed the Fitzsimmons–Tom Sharkey bout in San Francisco on 2 December 1896, awarding Sharkey the fight on a disputed low-blow foul.
Q 12What is unusual about Wyatt Earp's record across all his gunfights?
He was never wounded
His brothers and his friend Doc Holliday were all hit; Wyatt walked away untouched every time.
Q 13Wild Bill Hickok was shot dead in 1876 while playing poker in which town?
Deadwood
Hickok was shot from behind by Jack McCall at Nuttal & Mann's saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, on 2 August 1876.
Q 21What killed the Pony Express after just 18 months?
The telegraph
The transcontinental telegraph was completed on 24 October 1861, and the money-losing Pony Express shut down two days later.
Q 22Buffalo Bill Cody launched his famous Wild West show in which year?
1883
Buffalo Bill's Wild West opened in Omaha, Nebraska in May 1883; from 1887 it toured Europe, where Queen Victoria saw it in her Jubilee year.
Q 23Cody won the exclusive right to the name 'Buffalo Bill' in an eight-hour shooting match against whom?
William Comstock
Cody killed 68 buffalo to Comstock's 48, using a Springfield rifle he named Lucretia Borgia.
Q 14The 'dead man's hand' Hickok supposedly held when he died is traditionally what?
Black aces and eights
The dead man's hand is two black aces and two black eights; the link to Hickok was popularised by Frank Wilstach's 1926 biography.
Q 15What did Davis Tutt take from Hickok, sparking their 1865 Springfield duel?
A gold watch
Tutt seized Hickok's gold pocket watch over a gambling debt and wore it in public; their 21 July 1865 town-square shootout followed.
Q 16Which Kansas cattle town made Wild Bill Hickok its marshal in 1871?
Abilene
Mayor Joseph McCoy, who had built Abilene into the first great railhead for Texas cattle, hired him.
Q 17Who shot Jesse James in the back of the head in 1882?
Robert Ford
Robert Ford, a new recruit angling for the reward, shot James at his St. Joseph home on 3 April 1882 and was branded 'the dirty little coward'.
Q 18The James-Younger Gang fell apart after a botched 1876 bank raid in which Minnesota town?
Northfield
At Northfield on 7 September 1876, townspeople shot back at the gang; the Younger brothers were captured two weeks later near Madelia.
Q 19Jesse and Frank James learned guerrilla warfare riding with which Confederate bushwhacker leaders?
William Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson
Frank James rode with William Quantrill and both brothers with 'Bloody Bill' Anderson, whose men carried out the 1864 Centralia Massacre.
Q 20The Pony Express carried mail between St. Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento in about how many days?
10
Riders relayed mail the roughly 1,900 miles from St. Joseph to Sacramento in about 10 days, from April 1860 to October 1861.
Q 24Annie Oakley's real first name was what?
Phoebe
Born Phoebe Ann Mosey in Ohio, she was shooting game to feed her family before she was ten.
Q 25Sitting Bull, her fellow performer, gave five-foot-tall Annie Oakley which nickname?
Little Sure Shot
Sitting Bull called her Watanya Cicilla, rendered 'Little Sure Shot' on the show's posters, after watching her shoot in 1884.
Q 26Calamity Jane's real name was Martha Jane what?
Canary
She was born in Princeton, Missouri in 1852 and, at her dying request, was buried in Mount Moriah Cemetery next to Wild Bill Hickok.
Q 27Butch Cassidy's real name was what?
Robert LeRoy Parker
Born Robert LeRoy Parker in Utah in 1866, he took 'Butch' from a stint as a butcher in Rock Springs, Wyoming and 'Cassidy' from mentor Mike Cassidy.
Q 28Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are believed to have died in a 1908 shootout in which country?
Bolivia
The pair are believed to have died at San Vicente, Bolivia in November 1908 after a payroll robbery; they had first settled in Argentina with Etta Place.
Q 29The Sundance Kid took his nickname from a town in which state, where he served 18 months?
Wyoming
He was captured in Miles City, Montana, but the town of Sundance is in Wyoming's northeast corner.
Q 30The Colt Single Action Army revolver, adopted by the U.S. Army in 1873, is famous under what nickname?
Peacemaker
The Colt Single Action Army of 1873 became known as the Peacemaker, the classic .45 six-shooter of the frontier.