How well do you know the 50 states?
Naming all 50 states is one thing — knowing what makes them unique is another. These six questions start easy and get tricky, and every answer comes with a quick explanation.
Did you know?
- Rhode Island, the smallest state, officially had the longest name until 2020: 'State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations'. Voters approved shortening it to 'State of Rhode Island' that year.
- Colorado looks like a perfect rectangle, but surveyors in the 1800s made small errors, so its border actually has hundreds of tiny bends. Some people jokingly call it a polygon with more than 690 sides.
- Alaska is more than twice the size of Texas, the second-largest state. If Alaska were split in half, Texas would become only the third-largest state.
How the United States grew to 50 states
The United States began with 13 states along the Atlantic coast and reached 50 in 1959, when Alaska and Hawaii joined within a few months of each other. Each state has its own constitution, government and capital, and the way the map was drawn — along rivers, mountains, straight survey lines and old treaties — still shapes American life today.
From 13 colonies to a continent
After independence, the original 13 states were joined by territories to the west. New states were usually admitted once a territory had enough people and wrote a constitution approved by Congress. Vermont became the 14th state in 1791, and the pattern continued for more than 150 years as the country expanded across North America.
Straight lines and natural borders
Eastern state borders often follow rivers, mountain ridges and colonial land grants, which is why they wind and twist. Many western borders are straight lines drawn by surveyors along lines of latitude and longitude. Colorado and Wyoming look like rectangles, although small surveying errors mean their borders are not perfectly straight.
Names with many origins
About half of the state names come from Native American words, including Massachusetts, Connecticut, Ohio, Michigan and Utah. Others come from Spanish, such as Florida, Nevada and Colorado; from French, such as Vermont and Louisiana; or from English and European people and places, such as Georgia and New York.
Beyond the 50 states
Washington, D.C. is a federal district, not a state, and the country also includes territories such as Puerto Rico, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands. Their residents are US citizens or nationals, but the territories are not states and have different representation in Congress.
State symbols and identity
Every state has official symbols: a state bird, flower, tree and often much more, from state foods to state dinosaurs. These symbols, along with nicknames and license plates, help give each state its own identity and are a popular topic in American schools, where children often study their home state in depth.