Appalachian Mountains Trivia
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54 free Appalachian Mountains trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
The Appalachians once stood as tall as the Alps, share their bedrock with the Scottish Highlands and technically run through three countries. This quiz covers the whole range: the 480-million-year geology and the collision with Africa, the Spanish village name behind the word, Mount Mitchell and its unlucky professor, the Black Mountains and Blue Ridge, Kuwohi, Spruce Knob, Mount Rogers, Mount Washington's 231 mph wind and Katahdin. It also walks the Appalachian Trail from Springer Mountain to Maine, with Benton MacKaye, white blazes, Earl Shaffer and Grandma Gatewood, then tours the Smokies' salamanders and fireflies, the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive, Daniel Boone's Cumberland Gap, the chestnut blight, the hellbender, bluegrass and the dulcimer, coal, and the Appalachian Regional Commission's map of the region. Easy questions suit anyone who has driven the parkway; the expert tier asks for Cherokee names and Canadian subranges. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the range, its peaks, parks and trail, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. If you like this, try our quizzes on US national parks and on the Rocky Mountains.
30 of 54 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Appalachian Mountains run from central Alabama northeast to which Canadian island?
Newfoundland
Newfoundland: the range ends in its highlands, and the International Appalachian Trail is being extended along the island's mountainous west coast.
Q 02The 1972 film Deliverance shot its canoe scenes on which southern Appalachian river?
Chattooga
Chattooga: the film drew crowds of rafters and tourists to the river, and in 1974 Congress made it a Wild and Scenic River.
Q 03Which French overseas territory means the Appalachians technically span three countries?
Saint Pierre and Miquelon
Saint Pierre and Miquelon went back to France under the 1763 Treaty of Paris, even as France gave up the rest of New France.
Q 04The Appalachians are geologically related to which mountains across the Atlantic, from the same Pangean range?
The Scottish Highlands
The Scottish Highlands share that ancient chain's rocks, so the International Appalachian Trail now follows Scotland's West Highland Way.
Q 05The three mountain-building orogenies that formed the modern Appalachians began roughly how long ago?
480 million years
480 million years: as an ancient ocean closed, colliding landmasses piled rock onto North America's edge and pushed up the range.
Q 06Which American composer wrote the score for Martha Graham's ballet Appalachian Spring?
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland wrote it as 'Ballet for Martha'; Graham took the title from a Hart Crane poem, and Copland said he wasn't thinking about the Appalachians.
Q 07Long before Pangaea, which supercontinent's formation about 1.1 billion years ago began the Appalachians' geologic story?
Rodinia
Rodinia formed as ancient continents collided, and its later breakup opened the ocean whose closing eventually built the Appalachians.
Q 08The final mountain-building event that raised the Appalachians came from a collision with which continent?
Africa
Africa's collision helped assemble Pangaea, and when the continents split, part of the same range stayed behind in Morocco as the Anti-Atlas.
Q 09The name Appalachian derives from a village name transcribed by which Spanish party in 1528?
The Narváez expedition
The Narváez expedition wrote down 'Apalchen' near present-day Tallahassee, and the Spanish later applied the name to lands far inland.
Q 10Which writer proposed renaming the United States 'Appalachia' in the early 19th century?
Washington Irving
Washington Irving argued the nation needed a distinctive name of its own rather than borrowing 'America' from a whole continent.
Q 11Which Bill Bryson book, later a Robert Redford film, recounts his attempt to hike the Appalachian Trail?
A Walk in the Woods
A Walk in the Woods set off a surge of new hikers on the trail, even though Bryson himself never walked all of it.
Q 12Which country singer wrote and sang 'Coal Miner's Daughter'?
Loretta Lynn
Loretta Lynn's memoir of the same name became a best seller and inspired a 1980 hit film starring Sissy Spacek.
Q 13Which forester conceived the Appalachian Trail in a 1921 regional-planning proposal?
Benton MacKaye
Benton MacKaye pictured the trail linking shelter camps and farm camps where city workers could escape to the mountains.
Q 21Which grandmother thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail alone in 1955 with a shower curtain for shelter?
Emma Gatewood
Emma Gatewood said afterward that she had thought the hike would be 'a nice lark. It wasn't.'
Q 22Which subrange of the Blue Ridge contains Mount Mitchell?
The Black Mountains
Logging stripped much of the Black Mountains by the early 1900s, which pushed North Carolina to make Mount Mitchell its first state park in 1915.
Q 23Mount Mitchell is named after a professor who died how?
Falling at a waterfall
Elisha Mitchell died in 1857, apparently falling at a waterfall while verifying his measurements against a rival claim by former student Thomas Clingman.
Q 14Which South Carolina governor's staff said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail?
Sanford
Mark Sanford had actually been in Argentina, and after being spotted at Atlanta's airport he admitted an extramarital affair.
Q 15What colour are the paint blazes that mark the Appalachian Trail?
White
White blazes mark a footpath that crews keep relocating, one reason the trail's official length changes slightly each year.
Q 16What is the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail?
Springer Mountain, Georgia
Springer Mountain, Georgia, replaced Mount Oglethorpe as the terminus in 1958, after development spread around the old southern end.
Q 17What is the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail?
Mount Katahdin
Henry David Thoreau set out for Mount Katahdin in 1846 and described the climb in 'Ktaadn', the opening chapter of The Maine Woods.
Q 18Which families feuded along the Tug Fork in Appalachia?
Hatfields and McCoys
The Hatfields and McCoys' feud was fed by a disputed hog, a romance between the families, arson and murder.
Q 19Which town, headquarters of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, does the trail pass through?
Harpers Ferry
Harpers Ferry gained fame in 1859 when abolitionist John Brown raided its federal armory, hoping to start an uprising of enslaved people.
Q 20What did Earl Shaffer say he wanted to walk off on his 1948 Appalachian Trail thru-hike?
The war
The war had killed Walter Winemiller, the friend Earl Shaffer planned the hike with, so he walked partly in his honor after his own Army service.
Q 24Great Smoky Mountains National Park holds roughly two per square mile of which large animal?
Black bears
Black bears that get human food lose their fear of people, and aggressive encounters in the park clustered where tourists handed out food.
Q 25In 2016, a wildfire that began inside Great Smoky Mountains National Park swept into which tourist town?
Gatlinburg
Gatlinburg burned as the fires killed 14 people and destroyed homes, cabins and churches across Sevier County.
Q 26Which president dedicated Great Smoky Mountains National Park at Newfound Gap's Rockefeller Memorial?
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the park in 1940; John D. Rockefeller Jr. had given $5 million to buy its land, in memory of his mother.
Q 27Which nickname belongs to the park road along Fontana Lake's north shore in the Great Smoky Mountains?
The Road to Nowhere
The Road to Nowhere was promised to replace a highway flooded by Fontana Lake, but environmental problems stalled it after about six miles.
Q 28Which insects put on a famous synchronised display at Elkmont in the Smokies each late spring?
Fireflies
Fireflies' flashes fall into step as more males join the display, while females answer from the forest floor.
Q 29Where does the 'smoky' in Great Smoky Mountains come from?
Natural fog that looks like smoke plumes
Natural fog that looks like smoke plumes gave the range its name, but haze from power plants and cars now often shrinks the long views.
Q 30What was Clingmans Dome, the Appalachian Trail's highest point, renamed in September 2024?
Kuwohi
Kuwohi replaced the name of Thomas Clingman, a senator who later became a Confederate general, at the request of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.