Q 01/05

Which two rivers meet at Columbia to form the Congaree?

A) The Wateree and the Santee

B) The Saluda and the Edisto

C) The Broad and the Saluda

D) The Broad and the Catawba

Answer · why

C) The Broad and the Saluda

The city grew up at the fall line, the head of navigation on the Santee river system, roughly halfway between the Atlantic and the Blue Ridge.

Q 02/05

In what year did South Carolina's General Assembly approve creating Columbia as a new capital?

A) 1812

B) 1786

C) 1790

D) 1801

Answer · why

B) 1786

Legislators wanted a capital more central than Charleston, and the assembly first met in the new city in 1790.

Q 03/05

Which surveyor laid out Columbia's two-mile-square grid, making it one of the first US planned cities?

A) Pierre L'Enfant

B) John Lewis Gervais

C) Robert Mills

D) John Guignard

Answer · why

D) John Guignard

His plan came five years before L'Enfant's Washington, with 150-foot-wide Assembly and Senate streets and 400 blocks.

Q 04/05

Columbia's nickname "Soda City" comes from what?

A) The shortening of its name to "Cola"

B) A 19th-century bottling plant on Main Street

C) The mineral springs under the State House

D) A Coca-Cola bottler that sponsored the city fair

Answer · why

A) The shortening of its name to "Cola"

The name Columbia itself is a poetic personification of the United States.

Q 05/05

Which South Carolina city is more populous than Columbia, making Columbia the state's second-largest?

A) Greenville

B) North Charleston

C) Myrtle Beach

D) Charleston

Answer · why

D) Charleston

The city had 136,632 residents at the 2020 census, but its six-county metro area is home to nearly 900,000.