Memorising the 50 States and Capitals

To memorise the 50 states and capitals, take them ten at a time and give each pair one picture that sounds like both names: Alaska and Juneau become "ask her whether June knows". Say the capital's real name out loud as you see the picture, then test yourself from the state to the capital the next day and again a few days later. Ten pairs take about fifteen minutes, so all fifty fit into a week of short evenings, and the trainer at the top of this page runs the test for you.

The pictures below do most of the work. They are not clever, and they do not need to be: a picture only has to get you from a state you know to a capital name you can say. Where one does not land for you, swap it for your own, using the rules further down.

The 50 states and capitals, with a picture for each

The states run in alphabetical order, which is also the order of the trainer's five groups of ten. The words in brackets are the names each sound-alike stands for.

Why capitals are hard to remember

A state capital is a pairing with no logic you can reason your way to, and the obvious guess is often wrong. At the 2020 census only 17 of the 50 capitals were also their state's largest city, so the city you have heard of is usually not the answer: Albany, not New York City; Sacramento, not Los Angeles; Springfield, not Chicago; Harrisburg, not Philadelphia. The capitals that are the biggest city, such as Phoenix, Boston and Denver, are the easy ones.

The other difficulty is that many capital names are unfamiliar sounds. Many people have never said Montpelier or Pierre out loud, and Pierre is not even said the way it is spelt: it is "peer". Des Moines is "duh MOYN", which its spelling does not tell you either. A name you have never pronounced is hard to retrieve, because there is no sound for the picture to lead you back to.

How one picture holds a pair

The method is the keyword method, the same one used for foreign vocabulary: find a familiar word that sounds like the state, another that sounds like the capital, and make the two meet in one scene. The best-known classroom tests of it were done on the states and their capitals. In 1980 Joel Levin and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin taught a class of fourth and fifth graders keywords for each state and capital, then showed a picture joining them: for Maryland and Annapolis, marry and apple, two apples getting married.

A larger follow-up with 88 fourth and fifth graders, each learning the capitals of fourteen states, compared those simple pictures with a busier published system that turned every syllable into a word. The simple pictures came out ahead, though not on every test, and the busy system did no better than the children's own methods. A 1992 study taught 29 junior high students with learning disabilities the states and capitals, alternating weeks of mnemonics with weeks of traditional teaching, and they scored higher on the pairs taught with mnemonics whether the question ran from the state to the capital or the other way.

The same research also found the method's weak spot. Children sometimes kept the picture and lost the name: a child could remember two apples getting married and still answer "apple" instead of Annapolis. So the pictures on this page carry the real name wherever they can (Anna-police is Annapolis), and the routine below has you say the capital aloud every time. The countries and capitals guide tells the full story of those studies, and the keyword method guide covers the wider evidence for the technique.

Making your own pictures

A ready-made picture works only if it lands for you, and some of the ones above will not. Replace those with your own, following four rules.

Sound first, meaning second. The picture has to get you to the sound of the name. Topeka works as "toe peeks" because saying it gets you most of the way to the real word; it does not matter that Topeka has nothing to do with toes.

Make the two halves touch. A can and a toe side by side is two pictures. A toe peeking out of a can is one, and one is what you will remember. The same goes for every pair: the state's half should be doing something to the capital's half.

Keep the real name in reach. If your picture is "a sack of ramen", say "Sacramento" to yourself as you see it. If the sound-alike is far from the name, as "de money" is from Des Moines, practise the name a few times before you build the picture, which is what the 1980 study did with its class.

Swap rather than suffer. If a picture has failed twice in the trainer, it is the picture's fault. Write a new one beside the state in a notebook or a deck, and test that one instead.

Two of the pairs barely need a picture: Indiana's capital is Indianapolis and Oklahoma's is Oklahoma City, the state's own name with an ending. Three more are half free, because Carson City, Jefferson City and Salt Lake City all end in "City": learn the first word through the picture and the ending comes along with it.

The pairs that trip people up

North and South. The Carolinas and the Dakotas cause many of the mistakes, because each pair of states shares one sound-alike. Make the direction part of the picture. The North Carolina carolers hold a rally (Raleigh) up north; the South Carolina carols are on a Columbia record playing down south. The North Dakota duck coat is stung by a bee and keeps the bee's mark (Bismarck) in the cold; the South Dakota duck coat dries on a pier (Pierre) in the sun.

The famous city that is not the capital. When the answer that comes to mind is the state's best-known city, stop and check. Florida's capital is Tallahassee, not Miami; Texas's is Austin, not Houston or Dallas; Washington's is Olympia, not Seattle; Kentucky's is Frankfort, not Louisville. Give each of these pictures one extra second in the first week.

The odd ones out, as anchors. Some capitals are easier to place once you know a fact about them. Juneau, Alaska, is the largest community on the North American continent with no road connection to the continent's highway system: you arrive by air or by sea. Phoenix is the biggest state capital, with about 1.6 million people at the 2020 census, and Montpelier, Vermont, the smallest, with 8,074. A fact like that gives the name a second hook.

A week of short evenings

Five groups of ten make the plan simple. Each evening takes fifteen to twenty minutes.

Day one. Learn Alabama to Georgia: read each picture, say the capital aloud, then cover the capitals and test yourself. Repair any picture you missed before you stop.

Day two. Test yesterday's ten first, from memory, before you look at anything. Then learn Hawaii to Maryland the same way.

Day three. Test the first twenty, then learn Massachusetts to New Jersey.

Day four. Test the first thirty, then learn New Mexico to South Carolina.

Day five. Test the first forty, then learn South Dakota to Wyoming.

Day six. Test all fifty in a mixed order, from the state to the capital, then from the capital to the state. Mark every miss.

Day seven. Test only the misses from day six, fix their pictures, and test them again.

After the week, test the whole list again about six days later, then two weeks after that, and once more before whatever you need it for. Why those gaps work is in the spaced repetition guide.

Test it both ways

A test that only runs from the state to the capital leaves half the job undone. Being asked "which state's capital is Helena?" uses the same picture from the other end, and if the picture is good it works both ways, as the 1992 study above found. Run the reverse test once you have all fifty, and expect a few pairs that only work in one direction; fix those pictures until they work in both.

If you need the states on a map as well, learn the map after the capitals, not at the same time. Once a state has a picture, it is easy to place the picture on the map: Helen climbing a mountain sits on top of Montana, high in the Rockies.

Teaching them to a child or a class

The research on this list was done in classrooms, and the routine carries over. Before any pictures, read the capital names aloud together and have the children say them back, so that Montpelier and Cheyenne are sounds they have heard before a picture has to lead back to them; the 1980 class was made familiar with the capital names before the pictures came in. Then take one group of ten a week rather than one a day.

Let the children draw the pictures. A drawing they made is theirs, and redrawing a picture that failed is a natural way to fix it. Keep the drawings simple: two things touching, labelled with the state and the capital, is enough, and funny beats beautiful.

Test with the pictures out of sight, both ways: call out the state and ask for the capital, then call out the capital and ask for the state. Quick oral rounds at the start of a lesson, five pairs at a time, do the spaced review without any extra homework. The trainer on this page also works as a class warm-up on a projector: read the question out, take a vote on the four choices, then click the class's pick; the ones the class missed come back at the end with their pictures.

Doing it on this site

The trainer at the top of this page works ten at a time, in the same alphabetical groups as the table. It shows each state with its capital and picture, then asks for each capital in a mixed order with four capitals from the same group to choose from, lists the ones you missed with their pictures, and moves you on to the next ten when you get eight right. Your browser remembers which ten is next, so you can come back to it tomorrow.

For countries and their capitals, which need a different plan because there are nearly two hundred of them, see the countries and capitals guide. For lists that have to stay in order, such as the presidents, the presidents guide uses a picture for every number instead.