Myrtle Beach
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40 free Myrtle Beach trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Myrtle Beach began as a lumber company's railroad stop and grew into one of the most visited resorts on the East Coast. Along the way it picked up roller coasters, an air base, a boardwalk, around a hundred golf courses and more than its share of odd stories. This quiz covers the whole stretch: how the town got started, the storms that reshaped it, the rides and theaters visitors remember, the ballplayers, golfers and TV faces who came from here, and the fishing villages and state parks on either side. It is written for locals, regulars who come back every summer, and anyone putting together a trivia night at the beach. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave knowing a little more about the place than when you started.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which magazine did Time Inc. editors plan in 1954 at Pine Lakes Country Club, the oldest golf course in Myrtle Beach?
Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated was hatched at Pine Lakes by Time Inc. founder Henry Luce, who was no fan of games himself. Local course owners credit the magazine with turning the resort into a golf destination.
Q 02Which TV personality, raised in North Myrtle Beach, studied fashion in Atlanta before joining a game show in 1982?
Vanna White
Vanna White became co-host of Wheel of Fortune in December 1982. She competed in the Miss Georgia USA pageant in 1978 while working as a model in Atlanta.
Q 03Which country band played for tips six nights a week at The Bowery in Myrtle Beach before finding fame in 1980?
Alabama
Alabama repaid the club in 2013 with a 40th-anniversary tour named Back to the Bowery. The band left its long-running gig there in July 1980 to promote a single it first took for a fluke.
Q 04Which country music star owns Pirates Voyage, the Myrtle Beach dinner show that took over the Dixie Stampede theater?
Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton closed her Dixie Stampede there after 18 years and rebuilt the arena around a 15-foot-deep pool. The replacement show stars Blackbeard, a pirate with a history on the Carolina coast.
Q 05Which team, famous from a 1988 Kevin Costner film, moved and later became the Myrtle Beach Pelicans baseball club?
Durham Bulls
The Durham Bulls franchise left North Carolina when a Triple-A club took over its name. It spent 1998 as the Danville 97s while a new ballpark went up on the coast.
Q 06Which dance, done to beach music and shown in a 1989 film shot in Myrtle Beach, is South Carolina's state dance?
The shag
The shag became South Carolina's state dance in 1984, and North Carolina named it the official popular dance in 2005. Its basic step is a six-count, eight-step pattern danced in a slot.
Q 07Which Tiger King figure founded Myrtle Beach Safari, a wildlife tour in South Carolina?
Doc Antle
Doc Antle founded the Myrtle Beach Safari tour and appeared in the first season of Tiger King in 2020. He had worked on screen for years, training animals for films including Dr. Dolittle.
Q 08Theodosia Alston, whose ghost is said to haunt the coast near Myrtle Beach, was the daughter of which vice president?
Aaron Burr
Aaron Burr's daughter married Joseph Alston, later governor of South Carolina, and was lost at sea. Her ghost is said to roam the shore looking for her father.
Q 09Until 2016, the Hard Rock Cafe at Broadway at the Beach in Myrtle Beach filled a building of which shape?
A pyramid
A pyramid guarded by sphinxes housed the restaurant from the complex's 1995 opening. It was demolished in 2016 to make way for a Dave & Buster's, and the cafe moved to a new building.
Q 10Which 1954 hurricane, a Category 4 at landfall, destroyed the oceanfront boardwalk in Myrtle Beach?
Hazel
Hazel came ashore near the North Carolina line with winds estimated at 130 mph. All that survived of the boardwalk was a concrete walkway two blocks long.
Q 11Which name, coined in local newspaper columns in 1949, describes the 60-mile arc of beaches centered on Myrtle Beach?
Grand Strand
Grand Strand dates back to the titles of columns in two local papers, the Sun and the News. The arc runs from Little River south to Winyah Bay, across two counties.
Q 12Which boating route has cut Myrtle Beach off from the South Carolina mainland since 1936?
Intracoastal Waterway
The Intracoastal Waterway runs about 3,000 miles from Massachusetts to Texas. Hemmed in behind it, the resort grew along a narrow strip by the shore while land across the channel stayed rural.
Q 13Which president, touring the Southern states while in office, spent a night at Windy Hill in today's North Myrtle Beach?
Q 21Which attack jet, nicknamed the Warthog, was stationed at Myrtle Beach Air Force Base from 1977 until the base closed?
A-10 Thunderbolt II
The A-10 Thunderbolt II sealed the base's fate: the Air Force chose to phase the jet out, so the base was shut in 1993. The decision to keep the A-10 flying came only after the closure was settled.
Q 22Which Myrtle Beach shopping and residential district was built on the site of the city's closed Air Force base?
The Market Common
The Market Common shares the old base with more than 1,200 homes, a veterans' clinic and the new terminals of the international airport. The base's golf course passed to the city.
Q 23Which oceanfront amusement park in Myrtle Beach closed in 2006 after 58 years, despite online petitions to save it?
George Washington
George Washington was then led across a tidal swash by a local man, Jeremiah Vereen, on the road south to Georgetown. The shore he passed was barren and all but uninhabited.
Q 14The Myrtle Beach SkyWheel shares its design with a slightly smaller wheel overlooking which natural landmark?
Niagara Falls
Niagara Falls has the 175-foot twin, on the Canadian side. At 187 feet, the South Carolina wheel was the tallest in the United States east of the Mississippi when it opened in 2011.
Q 15Which South Carolina rock band hosts the Monday After the Masters celebrity pro-am golf event near Myrtle Beach?
Hootie & the Blowfish
Hootie & the Blowfish formed in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1986. The members are keen golfers, and their spring tournament raises money for local charities.
Q 16In which HBO comedy does Danny McBride's Kenny Powers pitch for a minor league team called the Myrtle Beach Mermen?
Eastbound & Down
Eastbound & Down filmed the Mermen's games at the real home ballpark of the Myrtle Beach Pelicans. The series follows a former major leaguer reduced to teaching gym at his old school.
Q 17Myrtle Beach Bike Week, a spring motorcycle rally first held in 1940, is also known by which bike maker's name?
Harley
Harley Bike Week has drawn as many as 200,000 visitors to the resort each May. The city answered with a helmet rule for all riders, which South Carolina's Supreme Court struck down in 2010.
Q 18Can-Am Days, held in Myrtle Beach each March since 1951, is timed to the spring break of which Canadian province?
Ontario
Ontario sends tens of thousands of visitors south for the week of special events. Myrtle Beach is also twinned with Burlington, a city in the same province.
Q 19Which attraction at Broadway at the Beach in Myrtle Beach occupies a building made to look flipped onto its roof?
WonderWorks
WonderWorks tells visitors its laboratory was ripped from the Bermuda Triangle by a man-made tornado and dropped upside down. The science attraction opened in 2011 and has a ropes course outside.
Q 20Myrtle Beach lies in which South Carolina county, the state's easternmost and its largest by land area?
Horry
Horry is pronounced with a silent H, after Revolutionary War officer Peter Horry. Cut off by rivers and marshland, its early residents nicknamed it the Independent Republic.
The Pavilion
The Pavilion drew record crowds in its farewell season. Its 1912 carousel, where frogs, ostriches and dragons outnumber the single lead horse, was moved to a small nostalgia park across town.
Q 24Which rock band gave its name to the signature roller coaster at Hard Rock Park, a short-lived Myrtle Beach theme park?
Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin The Ride was the main draw when the park opened in 2008 with a concert by the Eagles and the Moody Blues. Money troubles shut the gates within months.
Q 25Which figure-eight wooden roller coaster at Family Kingdom was declared a historic structure by Myrtle Beach?
Swamp Fox
Swamp Fox opened in 1966 and runs about 2,400 feet. Coaster enthusiasts gave it a historical marker for its 50th anniversary in 2016.
Q 26Which New Deal program built Myrtle Beach State Park, the first state park to open in South Carolina?
Civilian Conservation Corps
The Civilian Conservation Corps developed the park on land donated in 1934, and several of its 1930s buildings are still in use. The park protects a mile of undeveloped shore and a maritime forest.
Q 27Which attraction near Myrtle Beach did sculptor Anna Huntington and her husband found on four old rice plantations?
Brookgreen Gardens
Brookgreen Gardens opened in 1932 to show her work beside that of other American sculptors. It holds the world's largest outdoor collection of American figurative sculpture, plus a small zoo.
Q 28Which crime novelist, creator of private eye Mike Hammer, made his home in a fishing village south of Myrtle Beach?
Mickey Spillane
Mickey Spillane died at his waterfront home there in 2006. Hurricane Hugo had wrecked the house so badly in 1989 that it was almost entirely rebuilt.
Q 29Which former fishing village south of Myrtle Beach is known for its Marshwalk, a half-mile boardwalk over a salt marsh?
Murrells Inlet
Murrells Inlet has swapped most of its fishing boats for tourists and retirees. It sits about 13 miles down the coast, just across the line in neighboring Georgetown County.
Q 30Which tiny South Carolina coastal town, nicknamed 'The Black Pearl', was a haven for Black vacationers under Jim Crow?
Atlantic Beach
Atlantic Beach filled with Black-owned hotels, restaurants and night clubs from the 1930s. Bordered on three sides by North Myrtle Beach, it stayed out of the 1968 merger that created that city.