Q 01/05

Which fairground ride was invented by an engineer who grew up in a house in Carson City?

A) Roller coaster

B) Ferris wheel

C) Carousel

D) Bumper cars

Answer · why

B) Ferris wheel

The Ferris wheel was George Ferris Jr.'s answer to the Eiffel Tower, built for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. His father imported many of the eastern ...

Q 02/05

The Nevada State Prison in Carson City carried out America's first execution by which method in 1924?

A) Electric chair

B) Lethal injection

C) Gas chamber

D) Firing squad

Answer · why

C) Gas chamber

The gas chamber was first used there on Gee Jon in February 1924. The penitentiary opened in 1862 and ran for 150 years before it closed in 2012.

Q 03/05

Which author arrived in Carson City in 1861 with his brother Orion, the new secretary of Nevada Territory?

A) Bret Harte

B) Jack London

C) Ambrose Bierce

D) Mark Twain

Answer · why

D) Mark Twain

Mark Twain, then plain Sam Clemens, came west by stagecoach and later turned the trip into his book Roughing It. Orion often ran the territory when hi...

Q 04/05

Which Western star's final film, The Shootist, was set in Carson City and shot partly on location there?

A) John Wayne

B) Clint Eastwood

C) Gary Cooper

D) Henry Fonda

Answer · why

A) John Wayne

John Wayne used his script approval to move the story from El Paso to Carson City. He played a gunfighter dying of cancer in the 1976 film and never a...

Q 05/05

Since a 1969 merger, Carson City's limits stretch west over the mountains into which body of water?

A) Pyramid Lake

B) Mono Lake

C) Walker Lake

D) Lake Tahoe

Answer · why

D) Lake Tahoe

Lake Tahoe carries the state line with California, and Carson City's limits run right out to it. Several beaches on the eastern shore sit inside the c...