#Columbus library macon road series#

Columbus warehouses and merchants served planters and farmers within a fifty-mile radius. The subsequent availability of land reinforced the obsession about making money from cotton, but only a few realized the dream of becoming wealthy planters. The 1836 Creek War forced the final removal of 16,000 Indians, in an event now known as the Trail of Tears (1838-39). The Creek Indians clung to a strip of land west of the river, and outlaws tended to seek refuge there, where federal authority proved ineffective. The town retained a frontier atmosphere for more than a decade. Sketch of Columbus Courtesy of Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries. A four-block commons area or greenspace surrounded it on the north, east, and south. The original town consisted of a rectangle, thirteen blocks north to south (from the river to Seventeenth Street) and nine blocks east to west (from the river to Sixth Avenue), nestled against the irregular bank of the river on the west and south. The author Washington Irving’s contemporary writings about explorer Christopher Columbus probably influenced its naming. In 1828 the state legislature, realizing the economic potential of a location on the Chattahoochee River at the fall line, planned the city and auctioned its lots. By 2000, as the city rediscovered its picturesque river, private and public funding revitalized the original downtown into a premier venue and educational center for the fine and performing arts.

#Columbus library macon road series#

By the 1960s Columbus began shedding the image of a mill and military town, as its business and civic leaders diversified the economy, modernized its government, and launched a series of cultural initiatives. The creation of neighboring Camp Benning (later Fort Benning) in 1918 added another dimension to the city.

Entrepreneurs quickly harnessed the river’s power, and Columbus became one of the South’s earliest-and remained one of its largest-mill towns. Located at the head of river navigation, Columbus first boomed as a cotton-trading center. The lure of making money from cotton and the waterpower of the Chattahoochee River shaped the Muscogee County seat of Columbus for more than a century after the Georgia legislature created the city in 1828.