50 free Asheville trivia questions with answers. Asheville is a mountain city of about 95,000 that punches far above its size: it has the largest private house in America, one of the best-preserved Art Deco downtowns in the country, a synthesizer factory, a drum circle, and more breweries than most cities ten times as big. This quiz covers all of it, from the Cherokee name for the river confluence and the governor the town was named after to the Vanderbilts, E. W. Grove and his tonic fortune, Thomas Wolfe's thinly disguised neighbours, and Zelda Fitzgerald's last months at Highland Hospital. Easy questions cover the rivers, the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Hunger Games; harder ones get into Black Mountain College, the Grove Arcade's federal tenant, why the downtown escaped the wrecking ball, and which Michigan city Asheville tied for the title of Beer City USA. Every answer has been checked against a published source, Wikipedia or an official page, and the citation sits under each question. Good for anyone who has driven the Parkway, toured Biltmore at Christmas, or is planning a first trip to the Land of the Sky.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Asheville was renamed in 1797 in honor of which North Carolina governor?
Samuel Ashe
The honoree was 70 when the legislature elected him governor in 1795, and he served the constitutional maximum of three one-year terms.
Q 02What was Asheville's population at the 2020 census?
94,589
That makes it the most populous city in Western North Carolina and the state's 11th-largest; the four-county metro area holds around 422,000 people.
Q 03Asheville sits at the confluence of the Swannanoa River and which larger river?
French Broad
The larger river is thought to be one of the oldest in the world, cutting through rocks that predate the mountains it now flows between.
Q 04Roughly how high above sea level is Asheville?
2,130 ft
The altitude keeps summers noticeably cooler than the rest of the Southeast: on average only about nine afternoons a year reach 90 degrees.
Q 05Asheville's nickname 'Land of the Sky' was popularised by an 1876 novel written under which pen name?
Christian Reid
The author was Frances Tiernan of Salisbury, and the travel-romance sold well enough that its title became a nickname first for the mountains and later for the city.
Q 06The Cherokee name for the site of Asheville, Untokiasdiyi, is usually translated how?
Where they race
The Cherokee used the ground at the river confluence as open hunting and meeting grounds, and the name stuck until the middle of the 19th century.
Q 07Felix Walker's rambling 1820 speech gave Buncombe County's name to which word for empty talk?
bunkum
The word was later shortened to 'bunk', which in turn gave us the verb 'debunk'.
Q 08The April 1865 'Battle of Asheville' was fought on ground now occupied by what?
UNCA campus
Union troops had orders to take the town only if they could do so without significant losses, so after meeting Confederate reserves in trench lines they withdrew to Tennessee.
Q 09After the 1930 crash, Asheville spent about how many years paying off its debts rather than defaulting?
50
By 1929 the city and county owed over $56 million in bonds, the highest per-capita municipal debt in the nation, so almost nothing downtown was altered for decades.
Q 10Which architect designed Asheville's 1928 Art Deco City Hall, Asheville High School and the S&W Cafeteria?
Douglas Ellington
It was meant to be a twin to the county courthouse next door, but the county went with a taller, more conservative Neoclassical tower and the connecting wing was never built.
Q 11The 1924 Jackson Building, western North Carolina's first skyscraper, rose on the lot of Thomas Wolfe's father's what?
Tombstone business
The lot was only 27 by 60 feet, and the 15-story tower is said to hold the record for tallest building on the smallest lot.
Q 12Biltmore House was designed in the Châteauesque style by which New York architect?
Richard Morris Hunt
He and his client toured French Renaissance châteaux including Blois, Chenonceau and Chambord in early 1889 for inspiration.
Q 13Which landscape architect, famous for Central Park, laid out the Biltmore grounds?
Frederick Law Olmsted
Q 21E. W. Grove made his fortune with a 'Tasteless Chill Tonic' sold as a remedy for which disease?
Malaria
The quinine syrup was created after he lost his wife and daughter to the disease, and by 1890 it reportedly outsold Coca-Cola.
Q 22Which untrained son-in-law of Grove sketched the design for the Grove Park Inn?
Fred Seely
Grove had rejected plans from several prominent architects, and the granite hotel was built in less than a year by workers living in tents on site.
Q 23Which novelist lived at the Grove Park Inn in the mid-1930s while his wife got psychiatric care nearby?
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Unimpressed by the worn-out land, he proposed a park around the house, farms along the river, and a commercial timber forest across the rest.
Q 14Biltmore House, the largest privately owned home in the United States, contains how many rooms?
250
The count includes 35 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms and 65 fireplaces, plus an electric Otis elevator and a basement bowling alley.
Q 15In what year did Vanderbilt open Biltmore House to family and friends on Christmas Eve?
1895
Construction had begun in 1889 with about 1,000 workers and a private rail spur, and the house reportedly cost $5 million.
Q 16'Biltmore' pairs an old word for rolling land with De Bilt, a town in which country?
Netherlands
The Vanderbilts had come to New Amsterdam from the Dutch village of De Bilt in the 17th century.
Q 17During WWII, which Washington institution shipped 62 paintings and 17 sculptures to Biltmore for safekeeping?
National Gallery of Art
The works, including Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington and pieces by Rembrandt and Raphael, sat in the never-finished Music Room until 1944.
Q 18The first US forestry school opened on the Biltmore grounds in 1898 under which forester?
Carl A. Schenck
He had taken over management of the estate's forests from Gifford Pinchot, who went on to lead the U.S. Forest Service.
Q 19Which Best Picture winner is among the films that shot scenes at Biltmore Estate?
Forrest Gump
The estate has also doubled for locations in Being There, The Last of the Mohicans, Richie Rich, Patch Adams and Hannibal.
Q 20Biltmore Village, built as a company town for estate workers, was previously a settlement called what?
Best
The village was designed to look like an English country estate village, and its church still operates as the Episcopal Cathedral of All Souls.
The stay coincided with his heavy drinking and tuberculosis; the inn later inspired scenes in Lee Smith's novel Guests on Earth.
Q 24Which former president resigned as Chief Justice in the Grove Park Inn's Great Hall in 1930?
William Howard Taft
He is the only person to have led both the executive branch and the Supreme Court, and he died a month after stepping down.
Q 25Which country's government operated in exile from a cottage at the Grove Park Inn during World War II?
Philippines
The inn also interned Axis diplomats early in the war and later served as a Navy rest centre and an Army redistribution station.
Q 26The Grove Park Inn has staged the National Gingerbread House Competition since which year?
1992
The 2024 edition was cancelled after Hurricane Helene closed the resort for a month and a half; it returned in 2025.
Q 27Which federal agency occupied Asheville's Grove Arcade from 1943 to 1995?
National Climatic Data Center
The steel-framed 1929 building was designed as the base of a skyscraper that was never built, and it reopened as a public market in 2002.
Q 28In Thomas Wolfe's 1929 novel Look Homeward, Angel, Asheville appears under what fictional name?
Altamont
The book featured more than 200 thinly disguised locals, and the resulting uproar kept the author away from the city for eight years.
Q 29The boarding house Wolfe's mother ran, now the Thomas Wolfe Memorial, was named 'Old ___ Home' after which state?
Kentucky
An arsonist set fire to the house during the 1998 Bele Chere festival, destroying 200 of its 800 original artifacts; the culprit was never found.
Q 30Who wrote 'The Gift of the Magi' and is buried near Thomas Wolfe in Asheville's Riverside Cemetery?
O. Henry
The Asheville Citizen-Times building stands on an avenue named for him.