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48 free Columbia SC trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Columbia was laid out as a capital city on purpose in 1786, five years before Washington, and it has been collecting good trivia ever since: the secession convention that met in a downtown church, the night in 1865 when much of the city burned, the Army post that trains more new soldiers than any other, a zoo that outdraws everything else in the state, a stadium famous for a techno song, and a college band that met in a dorm shower and went 22-times platinum with its first album. This quiz covers the city's history, geography, landmarks, sports, colleges and famous names. Easy questions ask which rivers meet here and what the Gamecocks' mascot is called; the harder ones want the surveyor who drew the grid, the year the canal was dug, the record temperature, the founders of the two historically Black colleges and which famous 1942 mission the bomber crews at the airport volunteered for. It works for a Soda City trivia night, a USC family weekend or anyone settling an argument about whether Columbia is really Famously Hot. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the city, its institutions and its landmarks, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which two rivers meet at Columbia to form the Congaree?
The Broad and the Saluda
The Broad and the Saluda join at Columbia's fall line to form the Congaree, which later meets the Wateree to become the Santee.
Q 02In what year did South Carolina's General Assembly approve creating Columbia as a new capital?
1786
The General Assembly voted in March 1786 to build a new capital near the state's centre, away from Charleston; the legislature first met there in January 1790.
Q 03Which surveyor laid out Columbia's two-mile-square grid, making it one of the first US planned cities?
John Guignard
John Guignard surveyed the two-mile-square plan in 1786, five years before L'Enfant's Washington, with 400 blocks and 150-foot-wide Assembly and Senate streets.
Q 04Columbia's nickname "Soda City" comes from what?
The shortening of its name to "Cola"
'Soda City' plays on 'Cola', the local shortening of Columbia's name, a pun on the soft drink; the Saturday Soda City Market on Main Street takes its name from it.
Q 05Which South Carolina city is more populous than Columbia, making Columbia the state's second-largest?
Charleston
Charleston counted 150,227 residents at the 2020 census against Columbia's 136,632; Columbia had been the state's largest city as recently as the 2010 census, before Charleston overtook it.
Q 06Columbia is the seat of which county?
Richland
Parts of the city spill into Lexington and Kershaw counties, and Richland Library was named National Library of the Year in 2001.
Q 07Which Spanish explorer's expedition passed through the site of Columbia, SC in May 1540?
Hernando de Soto
Hernando de Soto's expedition crossed the Midlands in May 1540 on its way to Cofitachequi, the Mississippian chiefdom centred on the Wateree near present-day Camden.
Q 08The South's earliest secession convention met in Columbia on December 17, 1860, in which building?
First Baptist Church
The convention met at First Baptist Church on Hampton Street for one day before a smallpox outbreak sent it to Charleston, where the Ordinance of Secession was signed on December 20.
Q 09Which Union general's army captured Columbia on February 17, 1865, the night much of the city burned?
William T. Sherman
William T. Sherman's army entered Columbia on February 17, 1865, during its march north from Savannah; that night fires, fanned by high winds, destroyed much of the city centre.
Q 10Roughly what fraction of Columbia's buildings were destroyed in the fires of February 1865?
A third
About a third of Columbia's buildings, roughly 450 structures, burned on the night of February 17, 1865; cotton bales piled in the streets helped spread the flames.
Q 11What was the city's minor-league baseball team called before it moved from Georgia in 2015?
The Sand Gnats
The Sand Gnats played at Savannah's Grayson Stadium until 2015, then moved to Columbia's new ballpark (Spirit Communications Park, now Segra Park) and became the Fireflies in 2016.
Q 12Which Major League club became the Columbia Fireflies' affiliate in the 2021 shake-up?
Kansas City Royals
The Kansas City Royals took on the Fireflies as their Low-A affiliate in 2021, replacing the New York Mets, who had been the parent club since 2016.
Q 13Fort Jackson in Columbia trains roughly what share of all soldiers entering the US Army each year?
Half
Q 21Which coach led South Carolina women's basketball to a perfect 2024 national title?
Dawn Staley
Dawn Staley, a Philadelphia-born point guard who starred at Virginia, took over the Gamecocks in 2008 and won national titles in 2017, 2022 and 2024, the last with a 38-0 record.
Q 22Which band formed at the University of South Carolina in 1986 after one member heard another singing in the showers?
Hootie & the Blowfish
Hootie & the Blowfish grew out of Darius Rucker and Mark Bryan's cover duo, the Wolf Brothers; their 1994 debut Cracked Rear View became one of the best-selling albums in US history.
Q 23The owl-and-fish name of Columbia's most famous rock band came from what?
Fort Jackson handles about half of the Army's basic combat training, the largest share of any post; its roughly 52,000 acres lie inside Columbia's city limits after a 1968 annexation.
Q 14The Army post on the city's east side was first established under what name in 1917?
Camp Jackson
Camp Jackson opened in 1917 as a First World War training camp named for Andrew Jackson; it closed after the war and was reactivated as Fort Jackson in 1940.
Q 15Under what name was the state's flagship university founded in Columbia in 1801?
South Carolina College
South Carolina College was chartered in December 1801 at Governor John Drayton's urging to unite Lowcountry and Upcountry elites; it opened in January 1805 with nine students.
Q 16What is the name of the University of South Carolina's costumed rooster mascot?
Cocky
Cocky debuted at the 1980 Homecoming as the 'son' of Big Spur, the gangly earlier mascot he replaced; the Gamecocks' name honors Revolutionary general Thomas Sumter.
Q 17In which athletic conference do the South Carolina Gamecocks compete?
The SEC
South Carolina joined the SEC in 1992 alongside Arkansas, having left the ACC in 1971 and played as an independent for two decades.
Q 18Under what name did the Gamecocks' football ground, built with WPA money, open in 1934?
Columbia Municipal Stadium
Columbia Municipal Stadium opened in 1934 beside the state fairgrounds, became Carolina Stadium in 1941, and was renamed Williams-Brice in 1972 after Martha Williams-Brice's bequest funded its expansion.
Q 19Roughly how many spectators did Williams-Brice Stadium hold as of the 2025 season?
More than 77,000
Its ends were filled in during the 1940s and 1950s to make a bowl, and it ranks among the loudest venues in college football.
Q 20Which venue, opened in 2002 as the Carolina Center, is South Carolina's largest indoor arena?
Colonial Life
It seats 18,000 and opened with a women's basketball game against Clemson that charged a dollar a ticket.
Nicknames of two college friends
The name joins the nicknames of two college friends of Darius Rucker: 'Hootie', whose round glasses made him look like an owl, and 'the Blowfish', who had puffy cheeks.
Q 24Roughly how many visitors a year does Riverbanks Zoo & Garden, South Carolina's largest gated attraction, draw?
More than a million
Riverbanks draws more than a million visitors a year, more than any other gated attraction in South Carolina, with the zoo on the Columbia bank and a botanical garden across the Saluda.
Q 25In what year did Riverbanks Zoo open?
1974
Riverbanks Zoo opened on April 25, 1974, on the Saluda River west of downtown; its botanical garden, on the West Columbia bank, followed in 1995.
Q 26Congaree National Park, southeast of the city, protects the largest remaining tract of what?
Old-growth bottomland hardwood forest
Congaree holds the largest intact expanse of old-growth bottomland hardwood forest left in the southeastern US, with champion trees including a loblolly pine near 170 feet tall.
Q 27Congaree was upgraded from a national monument to a national park in which year?
2003
Congaree Swamp National Monument, created in 1976 after a grassroots campaign against logging, was redesignated Congaree National Park on November 10, 2003, dropping 'Swamp' from its name.
Q 28Roughly how many miles of shoreline does Lake Murray, northwest of Columbia, have?
About 650
The 50,000-acre lake was impounded in the late 1920s for hydroelectric power and became a boating and fishing magnet.
Q 29The South Carolina State House is built mainly of which stone?
Granite
The State House is built of blue granite quarried near Columbia; construction began in 1855 under architect John Niernsee and the building was not finished until 1903.
Q 30What happened at the State House grounds in 2015 after the mass shooting at a Black church in Charleston?
The Confederate battle flag was permanently removed
The Confederate battle flag, moved from the dome to a Confederate monument on the grounds in 2000, was permanently removed on July 10, 2015, three weeks after the Emanuel AME shooting.