Washington State Trivia
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8correct to beat the crowd
This Washington state trivia quiz has 97 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 97 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which president proclaimed Washington the 42nd state on 11 November 1889?
Benjamin Harrison
Benjamin Harrison kept Washington waiting: he refused to act until the territory sent properly certified paperwork, then signed the proclamation on the day the corrected copy reached the White House.
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 was named territorial capital by Governor Isaac Stevens when he arrived in November 1853 after an overland trek, and it has stayed Washington's capital ever since.
Q 04Washington's widely used nickname is what?
The Evergreen State
The Evergreen State was coined around 1890 by Seattle realtor C.T. Conover for the state's forests; it is stamped on licence plates, yet as of 2026 the legislature has never formally adopted it.
Q 05Washington is the largest U.S. producer of which fruit?
Apples
Apples are Washington's signature crop: the state grows well over half the national supply, and its growers say every one is still picked by hand.
Q 06The state vegetable of Washington is which sweet onion?
Walla Walla
The Walla Walla sweet onion grew from seed that a retired French soldier, Peter Pieri, brought from Corsica around 1900; it became the state vegetable in 2007.
Q 07Which conifer became Washington's state tree in 1947?
Western hemlock
Western hemlock was the Portland Oregonian's pick when it teased Washington in 1946 for lacking a state tree; local papers chose the western red cedar, but lawmaker George Adams called hemlock the forest industry's future backbone and won.
Q 08Which mountain is Washington's highest point?
Mount Rainier
Mount Rainier, an active volcano, carries more glacier ice than any other peak in the lower 48 states, so an eruption could melt it into mudflows that sweep through the densely settled valleys below.
Q 09Washington's highest peak is also known by which Native American name?
Tahoma
Tahoma, also rendered Tacoma, comes from the Native names for the mountain; a British naval explorer who sighted the peak in 1792 named it after a fellow officer instead.
Q 10On 18 May 1980, which Washington volcano erupted after the largest landslide in recorded history?
Mount St. Helens
Mount St. Helens erupted when an earthquake sent its north face sliding away in the largest landslide in recorded history; the sideways blast that followed killed 57 people.
Q 11Which strait separates Washington's Olympic Peninsula from Canada's Vancouver Island?
Strait of Juan de Fuca
The Strait of Juan de Fuca honours a Greek pilot whose claim to have found it in 1592 was probably a tall tale; trader Charles Barkley, who really did sail in, put his name on the map in 1787.
Q 12The Space Needle was built for which event?
The 1962 World's Fair
The 1962 World's Fair got its centrepiece from a doodle: organiser Edward Carlson sketched a tower after seeing one with a restaurant in Stuttgart, and architects turned it into the Space Needle.
Q 13The Space Needle stands how tall?
605 feet
Q 21The 1859 'Pig War' between the U.S. and Britain was a bloodless standoff over which archipelago?
The San Juans
The San Juans were claimed by both nations when an American settler shot a British company's pig rooting in his garden; the pig was the only casualty, and German arbitration awarded the islands to the US in 1872.
Q 22The Great Seattle Fire of 1889 began with an overheated pot of what?
Glue
Glue boiling over in a woodworking shop started the blaze on 6 June 1889, which destroyed the business district; Seattle rebuilt in brick and raised its streets, leaving old ground floors below as the Seattle Underground.
Q 23The first Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which collapsed in 1940, was nicknamed what?
Galloping Gertie
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 14Which company was founded in Seattle in 1916 by a lumber industrialist?
Boeing
Boeing began in 1916 as Pacific Aero Products: timber man William Boeing had just built a seaplane, the B&W, with navy officer Conrad Westervelt, and he renamed the firm after himself a year later.
Q 15Microsoft, headquartered in Redmond since 1986, was founded in 1975 in which city?
Albuquerque
Albuquerque was home to MITS, maker of the Altair 8800 computer, so Gates and Allen set up Microsoft there to sell it their BASIC software; they moved to Bellevue, Washington, in 1979.
Q 16Which Seattle-area giant was incorporated in 1994 as Cadabra?
Amazon
Amazon started in Jeff Bezos's garage in Bellevue as an online bookstore named Cadabra, a play on 'abracadabra'; within months he swapped the magic word for the name of a great South American river.
Q 17Starbucks opened its first store in 1971 beside which Seattle landmark?
Pike Place Market
Pike Place Market lay just south of the first Starbucks, which opened at 2000 Western Avenue; the shop later moved into the Market at 1912 Pike Place, so the store billed as the original is really its second home.
Q 18Pike Place Market opened in 1907 on which promise?
Meet the producer
Meet the producer was the point: farmers had been at the mercy of commission-house middlemen and their markups, so in August 1907 the city gave them a street where they could sell direct.
Q 19Which Washington dam is the largest hydropower producer in the United States?
Grand Coulee Dam
Grand Coulee Dam can generate more than 6,800 megawatts; switched on as the Second World War began, its power went to the Northwest's aluminium smelters, shipyards and aircraft plants.
Q 20Plutonium made at Washington's Hanford Site fuelled the atomic bomb dropped on which Japanese city in 1945?
Nagasaki
Nagasaki was the fallback: the bomber's first-choice target, Kokura, was hidden from view that morning, so Fat Man, built around plutonium from Hanford's B Reactor, fell on Nagasaki on 9 August 1945.
Galloping Gertie earned its nickname from its rolling deck; the bridge opened on 1 July 1940 and tore itself apart on 7 November in winds of only about 40 mph, undone by aeroelastic flutter.
Q 24Which guitarist who played Woodstock in 1969 was born in Seattle?
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
Aberdeen is where Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic became friends through a shared love of the local band the Melvins; they formed Nirvana there in 1987.
Q 26At which Seattle school did Bill Gates meet Paul Allen, his future Microsoft co-founder?
Lakeside
Lakeside gave its pupils rare access to a Teletype terminal and shared computer time in the late 1960s; Gates and the older Paul Allen bonded over it and later founded Microsoft together.
Q 27Seattle Seahawks fans are known by which nickname?
The 12s
The 12s get their name from the idea that a loud crowd is the team's 12th player; the Seahawks, in the NFL since 1976, retired jersey number 12 in 1984 in their fans' honour.
Q 28Which Seattle Mariner entered the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2016 with 99.32% of the vote?
Ken Griffey Jr.
Ken Griffey Jr. played alongside his own father for the Mariners in 1990, and that September the two hit back-to-back home runs against the Angels.
Q 29David Lynch's TV series Twin Peaks was shot in and around which Washington town?
Snoqualmie
Snoqualmie and nearby North Bend had every location the pilot script called for, co-creator Mark Frost recalled; the 268-foot falls beside the town became famous worldwide through the show.
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.