West Virginia Trivia
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108 free West Virginia trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
51 free West Virginia trivia questions with answers. West Virginia is the only state that lies entirely inside Appalachia, the only one born out of the Civil War, and the home of the world's largest steerable radio telescope, a Cold War bunker for Congress, and a red-eyed cryptid with its own festival. This quiz covers all of that and more: how the state split from Virginia, why the capital bounced between Wheeling and Charleston, what happened at Blair Mountain and Matewan, and where the pepperoni roll came from. Easy questions cover the nickname, the state song and the bridge on the quarter; harder ones get into the Hatfields and McCoys, the Golden Delicious apple, the Greenbrier bunker and the natives who broke the sound barrier, became the NBA logo, or calculated John Glenn's orbit. Every answer has been checked against a published source and carries a link, so you can settle a Mountaineer argument on the spot. Good for road trips down I-79, WVU tailgates and anyone who feels the tug of country roads.
30 of 108 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01West Virginia was admitted to the Union on June 20 of which year?
1863
West Virginia became the 35th state on June 20, 1863, carved from Confederate Virginia; the Willey Amendment made gradual emancipation a condition of admission.
Q 02Along with West Virginia, which other state was admitted to the Union during the Civil War?
Nevada
Nevada was admitted on October 31, 1864, hurried in before Lincoln's re-election; Kansas had joined in January 1861, months before the war began.
Q 03What is West Virginia's state motto in English?
'Mountaineers are always free'
'Mountaineers are always free' renders the Latin Montani Semper Liberi, adopted with the state seal in September 1863 to mark the mountain counties' break from Confederate Virginia.
Q 04What is West Virginia's capital and most populous city?
Charleston
Charleston, at the meeting of the Elk and Kanawha rivers, counted about 48,900 residents in the 2020 census, narrowly ahead of Huntington.
Q 05West Virginia is the only state that lies entirely within the area served by which body?
The Appalachian Regional Commission
The Appalachian Regional Commission's statutory region covers every West Virginia county, the only state wholly inside it; the state's mean elevation of about 1,500 feet is the highest east of the Mississippi.
Q 06How many panhandles does West Virginia have?
Two
The northern one reaches up between Ohio and Pennsylvania toward Pittsburgh; the eastern one includes Harpers Ferry near Washington.
Q 07What is the highest point in West Virginia, at 4,863 feet?
Spruce Knob
Spruce Knob, at 4,863 feet, crowns Spruce Mountain and is the highest peak in the Allegheny Mountains, inside the Monongahela National Forest.
Q 08Which town is West Virginia's easternmost and its lowest point above sea level?
Harpers Ferry
Harpers Ferry sits at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac where West Virginia meets Maryland and Virginia; the Potomac there, about 240 feet, is the state's low point.
Q 09Which abolitionist raided the federal armory in the state's eastern panhandle in October 1859?
John Brown
John Brown seized the Harpers Ferry armory on October 16, 1859, hoping to arm a slave revolt; Marines led by Robert E. Lee retook it two days later, and Brown was hanged that December.
Q 10How high above the New River is the roadway of the New River Gorge Bridge?
876 feet
The deck is 876 feet above the New River; when it opened in October 1977 it was the world's highest bridge carrying ordinary road traffic, and it appears on the 2005 West Virginia state quarter.
Q 11For how many years was the New River Gorge Bridge the world's longest single-span arch bridge?
26
26 years: from its opening in 1977 until Shanghai's Lupu Bridge surpassed it in 2003, its 1,700-foot steel arch was the longest single span of its kind in the world.
Q 12In what year was New River Gorge redesignated a national park and preserve?
2020
The redesignation came on December 27, 2020, in the year-end spending bill; Jimmy Carter had created New River Gorge National River in 1978, protecting 53 miles of gorge.
Q 13The New River, despite its name, actually rises in which state before flowing into West Virginia?
North Carolina
The New rises in the Blue Ridge near Blowing Rock, North Carolina, flows north through Virginia and enters West Virginia near Glen Lyn before carving the New River Gorge.
Q 21Where did the first witnesses of the Point Pleasant creature say they saw it, in November 1966?
Near 'the TNT area', an old munitions plant
Two young couples told police about a large black figure with glowing red eyes on November 15, 1966.
Q 22Which two songwriters wrote 'Take Me Home, Country Roads' with John Denver?
Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert
Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert, later of Starland Vocal Band, began the song while driving Clopper Road in Maryland; recorded with Denver, it peaked at number two on the Hot 100 in 1971.
Q 23In what year did 'Take Me Home, Country Roads' become one of West Virginia's official state songs?
Q 14Which two rivers meet in Fayette County to form the Kanawha, West Virginia's largest inland waterway?
The New and the Gauley
The New and the Gauley join at Gauley Bridge in Fayette County; from there the Kanawha runs 97 miles past Charleston to the Ohio at Point Pleasant.
Q 15Which state borders West Virginia to the northwest, across a major river?
Ohio
The Ohio River marks that border; it runs 981 miles from Pittsburgh to Cairo, Illinois.
Q 16What is West Virginia's official state rock?
Bituminous coal
Bituminous coal was named the official state rock in 2009; the state gem is the Mississippian-age fossil coral Lithostrotionella, found in the state's limestone.
Q 17The 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest US armed uprising since the Civil War, pitted coal miners against whom?
Lawmen and strikebreakers backed by mine owners
Lawmen and strikebreakers backed by mine owners, Sheriff Don Chafin's roughly 3,000 'Logan Defenders', held the ridge against some 10,000 miners until federal troops arrived in early September 1921.
Q 18Which Cork-born labour organiser was called 'the most dangerous woman in America' for rallying West Virginia's miners?
Mother Jones
Mother Jones, born Mary Harris in Cork around 1837, got the label in 1902 when West Virginia prosecutor Reese Blizzard used it at her trial for defying a strike injunction.
Q 19The Hatfield-McCoy feud played out along which river on the West Virginia-Kentucky line?
The Big Sandy's Tug Fork
The Tug Fork of the Big Sandy divides southern West Virginia from Pike County, Kentucky; 'Devil Anse' Hatfield's clan lived on the West Virginia bank and Randolph McCoy's on the Kentucky side.
Q 20Which winged, red-eyed creature was reportedly seen around Point Pleasant in 1966–67?
Mothman
Mothman sightings began on November 15, 1966; John Keel's 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies tied them to the Silver Bridge collapse of December 1967, and Point Pleasant started a Mothman Festival in 2002.
2014
The Legislature adopted it on March 8, 2014, making it the fourth official state song beside 'The West Virginia Hills', 'This Is My West Virginia' and 'West Virginia, My Home Sweet Home'.
Q 24Green Bank, West Virginia hosts a 100-metre, fully steerable what?
Radio telescope
Radio telescope: the Green Bank Telescope's 100-by-110-metre dish went into service in 2000 inside the National Radio Quiet Zone, where wireless signals are restricted to protect faint emissions from space.
Q 25The Greenbrier resort hid a Cold War bunker built for whom?
The US Congress
The US Congress: the bunker, code-named Project Greek Island, was built in 1958-61 beneath the resort's West Virginia Wing and decommissioned in 1995, three years after the Washington Post exposed it.
Q 26Before 1913, West Virginia's Greenbrier resort went by what name?
White Sulphur Springs
White Sulphur Springs: guests had 'taken the waters' there since 1778, and the resort carried the springs' name until the C&O Railway opened its new Greenbrier hotel in 1913.
Q 27The pepperoni roll, West Virginia's unofficial state food, was first sold in 1927 in which town?
Fairmont
Giuseppe Argiro, an Italian immigrant and former miner, sold the first pepperoni rolls at his Country Club Bakery in Fairmont in 1927 as a lunch coal miners could carry underground.
Q 28West Virginia's official state fruit is which apple variety, first found in Clay County?
Golden Delicious
Golden Delicious was found on Anderson Mullins's farm in Clay County; he sold the tree to Stark Brothers for $5,000 in 1914, and it became the state fruit in 1995.
Q 29West Virginia University's main campus is in which city?
Morgantown
Morgantown, on the Monongahela River in the state's north, has hosted WVU since it opened in 1867 as the Agricultural College of West Virginia under the Morrill land-grant act.
Q 30WVU's Mountaineer mascot carries what alongside a buckskin suit and coonskin cap?
A period rifle and powder horn
The Mountaineer's kit is a period rifle and powder horn; the musket is fired after every score, and a new student Mountaineer is chosen each spring with a scholarship attached.