Q 01/05

The city is named after which US president, who died in June 1836, months before it became territorial capital?

A) James Madison

B) James Monroe

C) Andrew Jackson

D) John Quincy Adams

Answer · why

A) James Madison

Founder James Duane Doty also named the streets after the other 38 signers of the US Constitution.

Q 02/05

The Ho-Chunk name for the Madison area, Teejop, means what?

A) Where the rivers meet

B) Land of the four lakes

C) Hill of the council fire

D) Place of the white pines

Answer · why

B) Land of the four lakes

The four lakes are Mendota, Monona, Waubesa and Kegonsa, and the prairies around them were dotted with effigy mounds built more than a thousand years ...

Q 03/05

Which speculator lobbied legislators with buffalo robes and cheap lots to make his swampy 1829 purchase the capital?

A) Nelson Dewey

B) Solomon Juneau

C) Henry Dodge

D) James Duane Doty

Answer · why

D) James Duane Doty

By the final vote roughly half the legislators owned Madison lots; a business partner called Doty 'a liar, a calumniator and a swindler'.

Q 04/05

Madison is Wisconsin's second-largest city. Roughly what was its population at the 2020 census?

A) 480,000

B) 400,000

C) 270,000

D) 330,000

Answer · why

C) 270,000

The wider metro area holds about 708,000 people, and as of 2024 it is the fastest-growing city in the state.

Q 05/05

The State Capitol's exterior dome, the largest of its kind in the world, is made of what material?

A) Sandstone

B) Marble

C) Granite

D) Limestone

Answer · why

C) Granite

The Bethel white granite was quarried in Vermont, and the dome itself was modelled on the US Capitol's.