60 free Greenville SC trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
52 free Greenville SC trivia questions with answers. Greenville, South Carolina went from Cherokee hunting ground to a Loyalist's plantation, from a village called Pleasantburg to the 'Textile Center of the South', and then, after the mills closed, into one of the most admired downtown revivals in the country. This quiz covers all of it: Vardry McBee and the founding, the 19 mills, the Poinsett Hotel and the 1820 stone bridge, the Camperdown Bridge coming down and the Liberty Bridge going up, the Swamp Rabbit Trail, Unity Park and the zoo. It also takes in the teams (the Drive, the Swamp Rabbits, the Triumph), the employers that remade the Upstate (Michelin, BMW, the F-16 line), the colleges, and the people who came from here, from Shoeless Joe Jackson and Jesse Jackson to Kevin Garnett, Charles Townes, Joanne Woodward and Peabo Bryson. Easy questions open it and the later ones will test people who have lived here for decades, so it works for a bar quiz on Main Street, a classroom or a newcomer's welcome night. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia entry on the place, team or person, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
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Q 01Where does Greenville rank among South Carolina's cities by population, according to the 2020 census?
Sixth
The city itself has just over 70,000 people, but its metro area, at nearly a million, is the largest in the state.
Q 02Which waterway runs through the middle of downtown Greenville?
Reedy River
It is a tributary of the Saluda, and its falls in the West End are considered the birthplace of the city.
Q 03Before colonists arrived, the land that became Greenville was the hunting ground of which Native nation?
Cherokee
The Treaty of Dewitt's Corner in 1777 ceded almost all of their land, including present-day Greenville, to South Carolina.
Q 04Which local peak still carries a version of Loyalist settler Richard Pearis's name?
Paris Mountain
Pearis backed the Loyalists, so the Patriots burned his plantation and jailed him in Charleston; the mountain kept his name in a different spelling.
Q 05What was the village established in 1797 by Lemuel J. Alston called before it took the name Greenville?
Pleasantburg
Alston built a stately mansion there; Vardry McBee later bought the land in 1816 and made the mansion his home.
Q 06Who is considered the 'father of Greenville' for donating land for churches, academies and a cotton mill?
Vardry McBee
He also funded the Greenville & Columbia Railroad in 1853, and the town grew to about 1,000 people in the 1850s as a summer resort.
Q 07Which school did McBee help bring to Greenville from Winnsboro in 1851?
Furman
Founded in 1826 and named for a Baptist pastor, it is the oldest private institution of higher learning in South Carolina.
Q 08Greenville County, formed in 1786, is usually said to be named for which Revolutionary general?
Nathanael Greene
It was the first county carved out of the old Ninety-Six District, and its name was originally spelled Greeneville.
Q 09By 1915, Greenville's cotton mills had earned it which nickname?
Textile Center of the South
From 1915 to 2004 the city hosted the Southern Textile Exposition, a major industry trade fair.
Q 10At its peak, roughly how many textile mills operated in and around Greenville?
19
That concentration is why the city styled itself 'The Textile Capital of the World' for much of the 20th century.
Q 11The Mansion House was demolished in 1925 and replaced by which downtown hotel?
Westin Poinsett
Renovated in the late 1990s with Poinsett Plaza at its entrance, it is still a Main Street landmark.
Q 12South Carolina's oldest bridge, an 1820 stone span near Greenville, may be by which Washington Monument architect?
Robert Mills
Named for Joel Roberts Poinsett, the Gothic-arched bridge over Little Gap Creek was part of the Old Buncombe Road and is now a heritage preserve.
Q 13A 1946 Greenville explosion that killed six and injured over 150 involved a tank of what?
Propane
Q 21The former Donaldson Air Force Base, now a technology park, hosts production of which fighter jet?
F-16 Fighting Falcon
Lockheed Martin builds it at the South Carolina Technology and Aviation Center, which also has an EV test track.
Q 22The Peace Center, opened in 1990, takes its name from what?
A local family who gave $10 million
It was built on the site of three derelict factories, one of which made wagons for the Confederate Army.
Q 23Which mayonnaise brand was created in Greenville in 1917 by a woman selling sandwiches to soldiers?
Duke's
The blast was heard in Gaffney, about 50 miles away.
Q 14Bob Jones University moved to Greenville in 1947 from which city?
Cleveland, Tennessee
The school had begun in Florida in 1927, barely survived bankruptcy in the Depression, and more than doubled in size within two years of arriving in Greenville.
Q 15Bob Jones Jr. built the university's art museum by first collecting which style, cheap and unfashionable after WWII?
Italian Baroque
The collection grew to more than 400 European paintings from the 14th through 19th centuries; one Lucas van Leyden turned out to be Nazi loot and went back to Germany.
Q 16Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport opened in 1962 near which town?
Greer
Textile magnate Roger Milliken pushed the two rival cities to share one airport, and the field is also named for him.
Q 17In 2024 GSP was South Carolina's third-busiest airport, behind Charleston and which other?
Myrtle Beach International
It handles around 3 million passengers a year and has a FedEx package hub on its north end.
Q 18Which company was persuaded to move its North American headquarters to Greenville in 1984?
Michelin
Mayor Bill Workman and the chamber of commerce made the pitch; the tire maker's arrival kicked off a wave of foreign investment in the Upstate.
Q 19BMW's 1994 plant near Spartanburg was the company's first factory outside which country?
Germany
It has since become BMW's highest-volume plant in the world, building the X3, X5, X6, X7 and XM.
Q 20How many vehicles did the BMW plant near Greenville build in 2025, the most of any BMW plant worldwide?
396,117
About 225,000 of them were exported, worth roughly $10.1 billion.
It is now the third-largest mayonnaise brand in the US, uses extra egg yolks and no sugar, and is still made in nearby Mauldin.
Q 24Bon Secours Wellness Arena opened in 1998 carrying the name of which grocery chain?
Bi-Lo
The 16,000-seat arena replaced the old Memorial Auditorium and is home to the city's ECHL hockey team.
Q 25Falls Park was founded in 1967 when which group reclaimed 26 acres of old mill land?
Carolina Foothills Garden Club
Renovation accelerated in the late 1990s and the park was rededicated in 2004 after a $15 million overhaul.
Q 26What is structurally unusual about the Liberty Bridge in Falls Park?
Its cables are on one side only
The 355-foot curved span, designed by Rosales + Partners, won the Arthur G. Hayden medal for innovative design in 2005.
Q 27How long is the Liberty Bridge?
355 feet
Bridges with similar engineering exist in Europe, but its curving geometry is unique.
Q 28Which structure blocked the view of the falls for four decades until it was torn down in 2002?
Camperdown Bridge
Its removal cleared the way for the Liberty Bridge two years later, and Falls Park went from eyesore to the city's postcard view.
Q 29Who became mayor of Greenville in December 1995?
Knox White
His tenure covers the removal of the Camperdown Bridge, the Liberty Bridge, Unity Park and the opening of the Swamp Rabbit Trail.
Q 30The Swamp Rabbit Trail follows the bed of which defunct railroad?
Greenville & Northern Railway
The county bought the roadbed in 1999 with commuter rail in mind; a 2014 study estimated half a million people a year were using the trail instead.