All 50 US States and Capitals

All 50 US states with their capital cities and official two-letter postal abbreviations. The abbreviations are the USPS standard, the same codes used in addresses and in most datasets. That is worth noting because older traditional abbreviations such as "Calif." and "Penn." still appear in printed material.

Most wrong answers come from the same assumption: that the capital is the biggest or best-known city in the state. In the majority of states it is not. Many capitals were chosen deliberately for their central position, or as a compromise between rival cities, long before the modern population centres grew.

Two useful extremes to remember: Phoenix is by far the largest state capital by population, and Montpelier, Vermont is the smallest, the only state capital with fewer than 10,000 residents. Both are reliable trivia answers.