West Virginia Trivia
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103 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 103 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which city, where delegates met to break away from Virginia, served as West Virginia's first capital?
Wheeling
Wheeling hosted the conventions that broke with Virginia and was the new state's first capital; it lost the seat in 1870, won it back in 1875 and lost it for good in 1885.
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, days after its governor telegraphed the entire state constitution to Washington, a message that took hours to send and cost more than $4,000.
Q 03What is West Virginia's state motto in English?
'Mountaineers are always free'
'Mountaineers are always free' renders the Latin Montani Semper Liberi; Joseph Diss Debar, the artist hired to draw the state seal, is credited with suggesting it, and it circles the seal's farmer and miner.
Q 04What is West Virginia's capital and most populous city?
Charleston
Charleston won an 1877 statewide vote over Clarksburg and Martinsburg to become the permanent capital, and the state government moved in for good in 1885.
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 grew out of John F. Kennedy's 1960 primary campaign in West Virginia, where the poverty he saw led him to set up its forerunner in 1963; the commission itself followed in 1965.
Q 06West Virginia's odd outline includes two of which map feature?
Panhandles
Panhandles: the northern one is the leftover strip Virginia kept when it settled its border with Pennsylvania around 1780, a sliver the new state inherited when it broke away.
Q 07What is the highest point in West Virginia?
Spruce Knob
Spruce Knob, on Spruce Mountain in the Monongahela National Forest, is so wind-blasted that its red spruce grow stunted and lopsided, with limbs only on the sheltered side.
Q 08Which town is West Virginia's easternmost and its lowest point above sea level?
Harpers Ferry
Harpers Ferry stands where two rivers and three states meet; Thomas Jefferson climbed the rocks above the town and wrote that the scene was worth a voyage across the Atlantic.
Q 09Which abolitionist seized a federal armory in what is now West Virginia in October 1859?
John Brown
John Brown seized the 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 10What extreme sport is legal from the New River Gorge Bridge only on Bridge Day each October?
BASE jumping
BASE jumping: on the third Saturday of October parachutists leap 876 feet from the deck into the gorge while crowds walk the closed lanes, the only day jumping is allowed.
Q 11Until 2003, the New River Gorge Bridge had the world's longest span of which type?
Steel arch
Steel arch: the bridge held the record for 26 years, and its special steel was made to rust to a tough skin so that it would never need repainting.
Q 12Which activity is banned in New River Gorge National Park but allowed in its preserve?
Hunting
Hunting stays legal on the 65,000-odd acres of preserve; only about 7,000 acres at the heart of the gorge became national park when the national river was upgraded in December 2020.
Q 13The New River reaches West Virginia by way of Virginia after rising in the mountains of which state?
North Carolina
Q 21Which river is named beside the Blue Ridge Mountains in 'Take Me Home, Country Roads'?
The Shenandoah
The Shenandoah and the Blue Ridge barely touch West Virginia, crossing only its eastern tip for a few miles, yet the song became an official state song in 2014.
Q 22Green Bank, West Virginia hosts a 100-metre, fully steerable what?
Radio telescope
Radio telescope: the Green Bank Telescope replaced a 300-foot dish that collapsed in 1988, and it sits in the National Radio Quiet Zone, where wireless signals are restricted to protect faint emissions from space.
Q 23The Greenbrier resort hid a Cold War bunker built for whom?
The US Congress
North Carolina's high mountains feed the New River, which runs north across Virginia; despite its name it is often said to be one of the oldest rivers in North America, a claim geologists dispute.
Q 14Which West Virginia river draws whitewater rafters each autumn, when Summersville Dam releases water for its famous 'season'?
The Gauley
The Gauley's September and October dam releases send thousands of rafters and kayakers through its gorge; downstream it joins the New to form the Kanawha.
Q 15What 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 16The 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain pitted armed coal miners against whom?
Lawmen and strikebreakers backed by mine owners
Lawmen and strikebreakers backed by mine owners, Sheriff Don Chafin's 'Logan Defenders', held the ridge for days against thousands of union miners until federal troops arrived and the marchers went home.
Q 17Which Irish-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 Ireland, was given the label in 1902, the year she was arrested in West Virginia for defying a judge's injunction against strike meetings; she was then in her sixties.
Q 18The Hatfield-McCoy feud played out along which river on the West Virginia-Kentucky line?
The Big Sandy's Tug Fork
The Big Sandy's Tug Fork separated 'Devil Anse' Hatfield's clan on the West Virginia bank from Randolph McCoy's in Kentucky; an 1878 court fight over a disputed hog was one of the feud's first flashpoints.
Q 19Which winged, red-eyed creature was reportedly seen around Point Pleasant in 1966–67?
Mothman
Mothman sightings began in November 1966; John Keel's 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies tied them to the Silver Bridge collapse of December 1967, and a 2002 film starring Richard Gere retold the tale.
Q 20Which 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.
The US Congress: the bunker, code-named Project Greek Island, was dug beneath a new hotel wing as cover and kept ready for 30 years, until a 1992 Washington Post story exposed it and it was shut down.
Q 24Before 1913, West Virginia's Greenbrier resort went by what name?
White Sulphur Springs
White Sulphur Springs: the resort went by the name of its mineral spring until the C&O Railway bought it and in 1913 opened a year-round hotel named The Greenbrier after the county.
Q 25The pepperoni roll, a West Virginia lunchbox staple, was first sold at a bakery 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 26West Virginia's official state fruit is which apple variety, first found in Clay County?
Golden Delicious
Golden Delicious began as a chance seedling on the Mullins family farm in Clay County; Stark Brothers Nursery bought the tree, and it grew into a leading apple variety at home and abroad.
Q 27West Virginia University's main campus is in which city?
Morgantown
Morgantown's campuses sit so far apart that driverless Personal Rapid Transit cars, built in the 1970s as a federally funded experiment, still shuttle students between them.
Q 28WVU's Mountaineer mascot carries what alongside a buckskin suit and coonskin cap?
A muzzle-loading rifle
A muzzle-loading rifle, custom-built for the mascot, is fired at games to rally the crowd; the student who wins the annual cheer-off for the role earns a scholarship.
Q 29Which conference did the WVU Mountaineers join in 2012?
Big 12
WVU joined the Big 12 on July 1, 2012, alongside TCU, filling the places left when Missouri and Texas A&M departed for the Southeastern Conference.
Q 30Marshall University is named after which number chief justice of the United States?
Fourth
John Marshall was the fourth chief justice, after Jay, Rutledge and Ellsworth, serving from 1801 until his death in 1835; his friend John Laidley founded Marshall Academy in 1837.