50 free Virginia Beach trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Virginia Beach is where English America began, at Cape Henry in April 1607, and where a Guinness record for the world's longest pleasure beach now sits. These 41 Virginia Beach trivia questions cover the whole city: the 1963 merger with Princess Anne County that made it Virginia's biggest city, the 1792 Cape Henry Lighthouse that was the new nation's first federal building project, the Battle of the Capes that sealed Yorktown, the Norwegian Lady and the wreck of the Dictator, the Cavalier Hotel, and Edgar Cayce's hospital of dreams. The modern city gets its turn too: the three-mile boardwalk and the 34-foot King Neptune, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, NAS Oceana and its Super Hornets, Mount Trashmore, the Virginia Aquarium, Back Bay and First Landing State Park, the East Coast Surfing Championships, the Neptune Festival, and Pharrell Williams's Something in the Water. Locals will find easy questions about the 757; visitors and transplants will meet plenty they did not know. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia and city and park records, and each question shows its source once you answer.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Roughly how many people lived in Virginia Beach, Virginia's biggest city, at the 2020 census?
About 460,000
That put it ahead of Norfolk, Chesapeake and Richmond, and it is also the state's largest city by total area.
Q 02What Guinness record does the city hold?
Longest pleasure beach in the world
The city's nickname is 'The Resort City', and the oceanfront resort strip alone runs three miles.
Q 03In 1963 Virginia Beach merged with which neighbouring jurisdiction to form the present-day city?
Princess Anne
Voters in both approved a referendum, and the new city kept the better-known resort name.
Q 04How many days had the Jamestown colonists been at sea when they reached Cape Henry in 1607?
144
They named the cape after Henry, Prince of Wales; Cape Charles across the bay honours his brother.
Q 05On what date in 1607 did Christopher Newport's colonists land at Cape Henry?
April 26
They moved on to found Jamestown on May 14; the park was Seashore State Park until 1997.
Q 06First Landing State Park was known until 1997 by what name?
Seashore
Built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, it was one of Virginia's original state parks and is now its most visited.
Q 07The 1792 Cape Henry Lighthouse holds what distinction in US history?
First federal construction project under the Constitution
John McComb Jr. built it of sandstone for $15,200; a cast-iron replacement went up 350 feet away in 1881 after cracks appeared.
Q 08How tall is the 1881 cast-iron Cape Henry Lighthouse that replaced the original?
157 feet
Both towers became National Historic Landmarks in 1970, and the newer one still shines from Fort Story.
Q 09The 1781 Battle of Cape Henry, which doomed Cornwallis, pitted the British against whom?
The French
Comte de Grasse's 24 ships of the line held off Thomas Graves's 19 on September 5, 1781; Cornwallis surrendered six weeks later.
Q 10How long is the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel that links Virginia Beach to the Eastern Shore?
17.6 miles
It opened on April 15, 1964, with two mile-long tunnels and four man-made islands, and saves 95 miles of driving to Philadelphia.
Q 11Which crossing overtook the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel as the world's longest bridge-tunnel complex in 2018?
Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau
It is officially named for Lucius J. Kellam Jr., and a second Thimble Shoal tunnel is due around 2028.
Q 12Which installation is Virginia Beach's biggest employer and the East Coast's only master jet base?
Naval Air Station Oceana
Commissioned in 1943, it is home to every East Coast strike-fighter squadron and their F/A-18 Super Hornets.
Q 13How long is the concrete Virginia Beach boardwalk that runs north from Rudee Inlet?
Three miles
Q 21An identical twin of Virginia Beach's Norwegian Lady stands in which Norwegian sister city?
Moss
Sculptor Ørnulf Bast made both bronzes, unveiled on September 22, 1962; the towns became official sister cities in 1974.
Q 22The historic Cavalier Hotel opened on the oceanfront in which year?
1927
The Navy commandeered it in 1942 as a training centre; it reopened in 2018 after an $81 million restoration.
Q 23Which 'Sleeping Prophet' founded the Association for Research and Enlightenment in 1931?
Edgar Cayce
His Cayce Hospital had opened in the city in 1928 with 60 beds; the A.R.E. is still headquartered there.
It is 27 feet wide with a separate bike path; the first wooden version in 1888 ran just five blocks.
Q 14How tall is the bronze King Neptune statue that overlooks the boardwalk at 31st Street?
34 feet
The 12.5-ton figure was dedicated on September 30, 2005, and gives Neptune Park its name.
Q 15The Neptune Festival, the city's biggest, has been held every September since which year?
1974
Chamber president Richard Kline dreamed it up; its International Sandsculpting Championship is the centrepiece.
Q 16Roughly how many people does the Neptune Festival draw to the oceanfront each year?
About 500,000
Another 350,000 attend the NAS Oceana air show that shares the weekend.
Q 17Mount Trashmore Park, opened in 1974, was built on top of what?
A landfill
Its hills rise over 60 feet and it draws more than a million visitors a year; Tony Hawk has skated its 24,000-square-foot skate park.
Q 18Which Virginia Beach-born producer launched the Something in the Water festival in 2019?
Pharrell Williams
He met Chad Hugo at a seventh-grade band camp and formed The Neptunes; both went to Princess Anne High School.
Q 19Where did Pharrell and Chad Hugo, the future Neptunes, first meet?
A summer band camp
They were in seventh grade; both later played in the Princess Anne High School band, and fifteen Neptunes productions reached the top ten of the Hot 100.
Q 20The Norwegian Lady statue commemorates the 1891 wreck of which Norwegian barque?
The Dictator
Nine of the seventeen aboard died, including the captain's pregnant wife and son; the ship's figurehead washed ashore and stood as a memorial for decades.
Q 24The Virginia Aquarium opened in 1986 as the 'Virginia' what?
Marine Science Museum
Its tanks hold more than 800,000 gallons and 12,000 animals, including sea turtles, sharks and Komodo dragons.
Q 25Which surf contest, held in Virginia Beach every August since 1963, is the longest-running in the world?
East Coast Surfing Championships
It began at Gilgo Beach on Long Island in 1962 and moved south a year later; over 100,000 people attend.
Q 26Virginia's Adam Thoroughgood House is now dated to about which year?
1719
It was long thought to date from 1636 and was actually built by Thoroughgood's great-grandson; it became a National Historic Landmark in 1960.
Q 27What had Adam Thoroughgood, who named the Lynnhaven River after King's Lynn, been when he arrived in Virginia in 1622?
An indentured servant
He rose to sit in the House of Burgesses at Jamestown, and Norfolk takes its name from his home county.
Q 28Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge in southern Virginia Beach was established in which year?
1938
Its 9,000-plus acres of dunes, marsh and beach are a stop on the Atlantic Flyway for snow geese; False Cape State Park lies just south.
Q 29Which state park adjoins Back Bay refuge to the south, reaching down to the North Carolina line?
False Cape
It is one of the last undeveloped stretches of Atlantic coast, reachable only by foot, bike, boat or the refuge tram.
Q 30Which area code do locals use as a nickname for Virginia Beach and Hampton Roads?
757
948 was added as an overlay; 804 is Richmond and 703 is Northern Virginia.