Washington State Trivia
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8correct to beat the crowd
This Washington state trivia quiz has 98 free questions with answers and covers the Evergreen State from the Pacific coast rainforests to the wheat country of the Palouse. It takes in the giants born or based there (Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks, Costco, Nordstrom), the mountains (Rainier and the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens), the landmarks (Space Needle, Pike Place Market, Grand Coulee Dam, the ferries), the music (Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana and grunge) and the odd history (the Pig War, the Great Seattle Fire, Galloping Gertie, Hanford's plutonium). Early questions are the ones any Washingtonian should get: the capital, the biggest city, the state fruit. Later ones are for people who really know the place: what Amazon was first called, why Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed, and who or what the tunnel machine 'Bertha' was named after. Use it for a Washington trivia night, a Seattle-visitor warm-up or a classroom unit on the state. Every answer has been verified against a documented source shown under the explanation. Note: this covers Washington state, not Washington, D.C.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Washington was admitted to the Union in 1889 as which numbered state?
42nd
Washington became the 42nd state on 11 November 1889, three days after Montana (41st) and ahead of Idaho (43rd); it is the only state named for a US president.
Q 02Washington Territory was almost given what name before it honoured a president?
Columbia
Congress was offered 'Columbia Territory' in 1853, but Kentucky's Richard Stanton argued it would be confused with the District of Columbia, so it was named for George Washington.
Q 03What is the capital of Washington state?
Olympia
Olympia has been the capital since 1853, when it was named seat of Washington Territory; Seattle is the most populous city.
Q 04Washington's widely used nickname is what?
The Evergreen State
The Evergreen State, coined by Seattle realtor C.T. Conover in 1890 for the state's forests, appears on licence plates yet was never formally adopted by the legislature.
Q 05Washington is the largest U.S. producer of which fruit?
Apples
Washington grows more apples than any other state, well over half the US crop, and also leads the nation in hops, pears and sweet cherries.
Q 06The state vegetable of Washington is which sweet onion?
Walla Walla
The Walla Walla sweet onion, grown around the southeastern city of that name, became the state vegetable in 2007; the state fruit is the apple.
Q 07The state tree of Washington is which conifer?
Western hemlock
The western hemlock became Washington's state tree in 1947; the state flower is the coast rhododendron and the state fish the steelhead.
Q 08Washington's highest point, an active stratovolcano, is which mountain?
Mount Rainier
Mount Rainier, at 14,411 feet, is the state's highest point and the most heavily glaciated peak in the lower 48 states, with about 25 named glaciers.
Q 09The state's highest peak is also known by which Native American name?
Tahoma
Because it could erupt near a major city, it is listed among the world's Decade Volcanoes.
Q 10On 18 May 1980, which Washington volcano erupted after the largest landslide in recorded history?
Mount St. Helens
Mount St. Helens erupted on 18 May 1980 after its north face collapsed in the largest landslide in recorded history; the blast killed 57 people and dropped ash on 11 states.
Q 11Which strait separates Washington's Olympic Peninsula from Canada's Vancouver Island?
Strait of Juan de Fuca
The Strait of Juan de Fuca, named for a Greek pilot who sailed for Spain in 1592, runs about 95 miles between the Olympic Peninsula and Vancouver Island.
Q 12The Space Needle was built for which event?
The 1962 World's Fair
Built for the 1962 World's Fair (Century 21 Exposition), the Space Needle blends Edward Carlson's napkin sketch of a tethered balloon with architect John Graham's flying-saucer top.
Q 13The Space Needle stands how tall?
605 feet
The Space Needle rises 605 feet; when it opened in 1962 it was the tallest structure west of the Mississippi, and it was engineered to withstand 200 mph winds.
Q 21The 1859 'Pig War' between the U.S. and Britain was a bloodless standoff over which archipelago?
The San Juans
The only casualty was a pig shot by an American farmer while eating his potatoes.
Q 22The Great Seattle Fire of 1889 was started by an overheated pot of what?
Glue
The fire began on 6 June 1889 when a glue pot boiled over in a carpentry shop and destroyed the business district; rebuilding the streets a storey higher created the Seattle Underground.
Q 23The first Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which collapsed in 1940, was nicknamed what?
Galloping Gertie
Nicknamed Galloping Gertie for its rolling deck, the bridge opened on 1 July 1940 and tore apart in a 40 mph wind on 7 November, undone by aeroelastic flutter.
Q 14Which company was founded in Seattle in 1916 by a lumber industrialist?
Boeing
William Boeing's original firm was called the Pacific Aero Products Company.
Q 15Microsoft, headquartered in Redmond since 1986, was founded in 1975 in which city?
Albuquerque
Gates and Allen founded Microsoft in Albuquerque in 1975 to sell a BASIC interpreter for MITS's Altair 8800, and moved the company to Bellevue, Washington, in 1979.
Q 16Jeff Bezos first named the company that became Amazon what?
Cadabra
Bezos incorporated the company as Cadabra, Inc. in July 1994, then dropped the name after a lawyer misheard it as 'cadaver' and registered Amazon.com that November.
Q 17Starbucks opened its first store in 1971 at which Seattle landmark?
Pike Place Market
Starbucks' first store opened in 1971 in Seattle's Pike Place Market district, at 2000 Western Avenue, moving to 1912 Pike Place in 1976; the name comes from Moby-Dick's first mate.
Q 18Seattle's historic public farmers' market, home to the first Starbucks, opened in which year?
1907
Pike Place Market opened on 17 August 1907 so shoppers could 'meet the producer' and bypass the commission middlemen blamed for high food prices.
Q 19The Grand Coulee Dam holds what national distinction?
Largest U.S. power station by capacity
Grand Coulee Dam, completed on the Columbia River in 1942, is the largest US power station by capacity, at about 6,800 megawatts.
Q 20The Hanford Site in eastern Washington produced plutonium for which World War II bomb?
The Fat Man dropped on Nagasaki
Hanford's B Reactor, the world's first full-scale plutonium production reactor, supplied the plutonium for the Trinity test and for Fat Man, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki on 9 August 1945.
Q 24Which Seattle-born guitarist headlined the Woodstock festival in 1969?
Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix, born in Seattle on 27 November 1942, closed Woodstock on the morning of 18 August 1969 with his feedback-laden 'Star-Spangled Banner'.
Q 25The band Nirvana, pioneers of grunge, formed in 1987 in which Washington town?
Aberdeen
Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic formed Nirvana in their hometown of Aberdeen in 1987 and released the debut album Bleach on Seattle's Sub Pop label in 1989.
Q 26Which Seattle prep academy did Bill Gates attend, meeting his future Microsoft co-founder there?
Lakeside
At Lakeside School, Gates met Paul Allen and learned to program on a teletype terminal in 1968; he later left Harvard to start Microsoft with Allen.
Q 27The Seattle Seahawks joined the NFL in which year?
1976
The Seahawks entered the NFL as a 1976 expansion team alongside Tampa Bay; their fans, the 12s, twice set the Guinness record for crowd noise during the 2013 season.
Q 28Which Seattle Mariner entered the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2016 with 99.32% of the vote?
Ken Griffey Jr.
Ken Griffey Jr., the first overall pick of the 1987 draft, was elected in 2016 with 99.32 percent, then the highest share ever; Mariano Rivera's unanimous 2019 election later passed it.
Q 29David Lynch's TV series Twin Peaks was shot in and around which Washington town?
Snoqualmie
The Salish Lodge above Snoqualmie Falls stood in for the Great Northern Hotel.
Q 30The 1993 film Sleepless in Seattle starred Tom Hanks and which actress?
Meg Ryan
Meg Ryan plays Annie Reed opposite Tom Hanks in Nora Ephron's 1993 film, in which a boy phones a radio show to find his widowed father a new wife.