Georgia Natural Wonder #59 - Columbus (Part 2). 553

[Top Row Dawg]

Georgia Natural Wonder #59 - Columbus (Part 2)

Having set the precedent, we tangent a whole post on the history of Columbus. This was for centuries and more the traditional territory of the Creek Indians, who became known as one of the Five Civilized Tribes of the Southeast after European contact. Those who lived closest to white-occupied areas conducted considerable trading and adopted some European-American ways.



For years it was two dams and flay water.



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. Located at the head of river navigation, Columbus first boomed as a cotton-trading center. Entrepreneurs quickly harnessed the river's power, and Columbus became one of the South's earliest—and remained one of its largest—mill towns.





The creation of neighboring Camp Benning (later Fort Benning) in 1918 added another dimension to the city.



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. 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.

Antebellum Years


Sketch of Columbus

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. The author Washington Irving's contemporary writings about explorer Christopher Columbus probably influenced its naming. The plan for the city was drawn up by Dr. Edwin L. DeGraffenried, who placed the town on a bluff overlooking the river. 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. A four-block commons area or green space surrounded it on the north, east, and south.


Log Cabin moved from its original location ten miles from the current site, this structure is an example of a log cabin used by traders in the early 1800s prior to the settlement of Columbus.

The town retained a frontier atmosphere for more than a decade. 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 1836 Creek War forced the final removal of 16,000 Indians, in an event now known as the Trail of Tears (1838-39). The subsequent availability of land reinforced the obsession about making money from cotton, but only a few realized the dream of becoming wealthy planters. Columbus warehouses and merchants served planters and farmers within a fifty-mile radius. Initially the river linked the city's economy via Apalachicola, Florida, to the world cotton market, primarily to Liverpool, England.


The Walker-Peters-Langdon house, a simple Federal cottage located at 716 Broadway, was built in 1828 and is considered the oldest house in Columbus. The grounds include a slave cabin and other outbuildings.

The river's commercial advantage diminished in the 1850s with the arrival of railroads (via branch lines from Fort Valley and from Opelika, Alabama). Steamboats still plied the Chattahoochee, but rails began connecting Columbus with larger markets. The emerging rail center of Atlanta eclipsed Columbus as the western metropolis of Georgia.


Columbus Riverwalk before the rapids.

The Chattahoochee's waterpower made Columbus a manufacturing center. The river powered gristmills and sawmills as early as 1828 and a textile mill north of town by 1838. The city of Columbus, which controlled the greatest potential waterpower site in the South, never spent any public money developing this resource. Rather than building a canal to deliver waterpower to various locations within the city (such as Augusta did), Columbus simply sold the rights to dam the river and restricted the use of the resulting power to a two-block area along the Chattahoochee (between present-day Twelfth and Fourteenth streets). That decision limited the city's early industrial development. Even so, by the 1850s five water-powered mills produced textiles, flour, and sawed lumber, and at other locations fourteen smaller companies produced a variety of goods, bringing industry to an area reliant upon agriculture. In 1853 the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, an indefatigable traveler and astute observer, declared Columbus the largest manufacturing city south of Richmond, Virginia. By 1860, the city was one of the more important industrial centers of the South, earning it the nickname "the Lowell of the South," referring to an important textile mill town in Massachusetts.



Heritage Park is designed to recognize the people who harnessed the river and created the industries that laid the foundations for modern Columbus. Outdoor sculptures and historic elements of the park represent the textile, gristmill, brick, and foundry industries involved in the growth and development of the area.



By 1860, 9,621 white and black residents resided within 120 square blocks. This total included 955 industrial workers who lived in tenements next to the "Golden Row" mansions that lined the waterfront. In the late 1850s the industrialists financed a bridge (at present-day Fourteenth Street) to move the textile workers to Alabama. Since Georgians owned both sides of the river, no mills or wharfs developed in Alabama, and the west bank remained a suburb rather than a rival town. Olmsted noted that Columbus was a rough city and advised travelers not to stop there.


Lot of antebellum charm Columbus.

In 1860, 3,547 slaves and 141 free blacks lived throughout the city. Another 557 whites and 912 slaves lived in Wynnton, the suburb nestled atop the hills east of the city. Wealthy families built Greek revival and Italianate estates in this elevated area, which residents considered healthier than the riverfront. The census ranked Wynnton as the sixteenth largest town in Georgia in 1860.


An early view of the city of Columbus is featured in Thomas Addison Richards's Georgia Illustrated (1842).

Civil War



The Elms, now known as Wynnwood, is pictured here ca. 1970s and was built in 1834 for Lambert Spencer at 1846 Buena Vista Road. The center portion is Greek revival. In 1868 the Italianate octagonal wings were added. Today, it is the home of radio station WDAK. This historic home in Columbus is also known as The Folly and is believed to be the only double-octagonal house in the United States. The unique house with Gothic detailing is a National Historic Landmark.



Columbus reached its apogee during the 1860s. Its population ranked third among Georgia towns in 1860 and fifteenth among those joining the Confederacy. Its industrial output ranked tenth in the South, with its textile production probably second or third. Both its population and its manufacturing capacity increased during the Civil War (1861-65), but after 1865 Columbus never again equaled those rankings except in textile production. The city divided over the issue of secession in 1860-61, but eventually the voters supported it. By 1862 the city had sent eighteen companies (1,200 men) to the Confederate army. The city's most famous soldier was General Henry L. Benning.



Historical marker at grave reads...

BRIGADIER GENERAL HENRY LEWIS BENNING

Born in Columbia County, Georgia, on April 2, 1814, Henry L. Benning attended Franklin College prior to practicing law in Columbus. As a local attorney and state Supreme Court Judge, Benning played an active role in Georgia’s secession in 1861. Entering the Civil War as Colonel of the 17th Georgia Infantry Regiment, he eventually became a brigadier general. He was wounded at the Battle of the Wilderness but continued his leadership of “Benning’s Brigade” until the surrender at Appomattox. After the war, Benning returned to Columbus and resumed his law practice. He died on July 10, 1875. Fort Benning is named in his honor.


Benning fought with Robert Toombs at Burnside Bridge at the Battle of Antietam. 500 Georgians kept 10,000 Yankees from crossing bridge for four hours.


CSS Muscogee patrols town.


The CSS Muscogee Ironclad still at the Port Columbus museum, which is the National Civil War Naval Museum.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, the industries of Columbus expanded their production; this became one of the most important centers of industry in the Confederacy. During the war, Columbus ranked second to Richmond in the manufacture of supplies for the Confederate army. Factories tripled their output and shifted to war-related products. Storekeepers boarded up their windows and began making drums, fifes, India rubber cloth, and sewing tents and uniforms. The Eagle Manufacturing Company made textiles of various sorts but especially woolens for Confederate uniforms.



The Columbus Iron Works manufactured cannons and machinery.



Greenwood and Gray made firearms, and Louis and Elias Haimon produced swords and bayonets.



Various branches of the Confederate government confiscated existing facilities and created their own operations: clothing and wagon establishments, the South's largest shoe factory staffed by black labor, the Columbus Arsenal, the Confederate Naval Iron Works, and the Navy Yard. The Iron Works produced steam engines for ships, while the Navy Yard built the ironclad Muscogee. The need for workers pushed the city's population from 10,000 to 15,000.


Muscogee, also called Jackson.

Columbus escaped some of the war's impact. Since Union general William T. Sherman's army never reached the city, casualties from the fighting around Atlanta, during the Atlanta campaign, were evacuated to hospitals in Columbus. Eventually seven buildings—stores, saloons, churches, and the courthouse—served as hospitals.


The restored Italian villa-style house known as 700 Broadway was the only two-story brick home in the original city of Columbus. The structure dates to the 1830s.

The city's industries attracted General James H. Wilson's Union raiders (13,500 cavalrymen armed with repeating rifles) on Easter Sunday, April 16, 1865—one week after Confederate general Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox, and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Unaware of those events, Confederate home-guard units attempted to stop the raiders in the hills east of Columbus.



Wilson surprised the defenders by attacking at night in the Battle For Columbus. Amid the ensuing chaos, the untrained Southerners fled, to be joined by the Union soldiers in a mad dash for the bridge to Columbus. Wilson lost 25 men, while his troops captured about 1,500 Confederates and killed 9.





Another recount of the last battle of the Civil War.

John Stith Pemberton, who later developed Coca-Cola in Columbus, was wounded in this battle. After becoming addicted to morphine, Pemberton sought out a replacement for his addiction. After creating Coca-Cola, he carried it to Atlanta before he died in 1888. It is the most excellent of all tonics, assisting digestion, imparting energy to the organs of respiration, and strengthening the muscular and nervous systems. With the aid of the coca plant, the Indians had for years performed "astonishing" feats without fatigue. On the day of Pemberton's funeral, Atlanta druggists closed their stores and attended the services en masse as a tribute of respect. On that day, not one drop of Coca-Cola was dispensed in the entire city. At sunup the following day, a special train carried his body to Columbus, where a large group of friends, relatives, and admirers laid him to rest. The Atlanta newspapers called him "the oldest druggist of Atlanta and one of her best known citizens."





This Greek revival-style cottage, at 11 Seventh Street in Columbus, was occupied by John Stith Pemberton and his family, 1855-60. Pemberton, a druggist in Columbus and later Atlanta, was the originator of Coca-Cola. The apothecary, once the kitchen, houses unique Coke memorabilia.Folks leave tributes at his grave often.

Col. Charles Augustus Lafayette Lamar, owner of the last slave ship in America, was also killed here at the Battle of Columbus.


Lamar and Wanderer.



Later, Columbus boosters proclaimed this as the war's last battle. Over time they continued qualifying its title until this skirmish became "The Last Land Battle of the War Between the States East of the Mississippi."



The day after the battle, Wilson's troops torched the city's industries. The remains of the hull of the ironclad Muscogee now form the centerpiece of the Port Columbus Civil War Naval Center. As the fires raged and Wilson's troops headed toward Macon, a mob composed of whites, former slaves, and some Union soldiers looted the stores on Broad Street.



In the spring of 1866 the Ladies Memorial Association of Columbus passed a resolution to set aside one day annually to memorialize the Confederate dead. The secretary of the association, Mrs. Charles J. (Mary Ann) Williams, was directed to write a letter inviting the ladies of every Southern state to join them in the observance. The letter was written in March 1866 and sent to representatives of all of the principal cities in the South, including Atlanta, Macon, Montgomery, Memphis, Richmond, St. Louis, Alexandria, Columbia, and New Orleans. This was the beginning of the influential work by ladies' organizations to honor the war dead.


Presidents of the LMA’s across the south. Y/N?

The date for the holiday was selected by Elizabeth "Lizzie" Rutherford Ellis. She chose April 26, the first anniversary of Confederate General Johnston's final surrender to Union General Sherman at Bennett Place, North Carolina. For many in the South, that act marked the official end of the Civil War.



In 1868, General John A. Logan, commander in chief of the Union Civil War Veterans Fraternity called the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), launched the Memorial Day holiday that has become observed in the entire United States. General Logan's wife said he had borrowed from practices of Confederate Memorial Day. She wrote that Logan "said it was not too late for the Union men of the nation to follow the example of the people of the South in perpetuating the memory of their friends who had died for the cause they thought just and right." Their son won the Medal of Honor in the Philippines years later.



While two dozen cities across the country claim to have originated the Memorial Day holiday, Bellware and Gardiner firmly establish that the holiday began in Columbus. In The Genesis of the Memorial Day Holiday in America, they show that the Columbus Ladies Memorial Association’s call to observe a day annually to decorate soldiers’ graves inaugurated a movement first in the south and then in the north to honor the soldiers who died during the Civil War.


Confederate Memorial Day much different from the past.

At war's end U.S. president Andrew Johnson named his friend and fellow Unionist James Johnson, a Columbusite, as provisional governor of Georgia. Local Reconstruction was marked by a violent confrontation with black Union troops in February 1866 and the Ku Klux Klan –style murder of George Ashburn, an outspoken Scalawag (local Republican) in 1868.



Reconstruction brought free schools to the city. Since the Freedmen's Bureau created black schools, white leaders finally moved to establish public schools in 1867. Freedmen from rural areas built shanties on the East Commons. Despite harassment from locals and white federal troops, these blacks persevered and created a vibrant neighborhood in the southeast corner of the city known as "Sixth and Eighth" (Avenue and Street respectively). The city's most important black churches are still in this area.



Gertrude "Ma" Rainey , a Columbus native recognized as the mother of blues, purchased a home in this area and retired here in the mid-1930s.





Industrial Expansion


Columbus Iron Works

Industrial reconstruction began immediately after 1865. Randolph Lawler Mott, a prominent Unionist (whose home still stands along the riverbank just north of Fourteenth Street), controlled the local Republican Party and the city during Reconstruction. As an entrepreneur, Mott simply joined with ex-Confederate and Democratic businessmen to rebuild. Local newspaper editors, fifteen years before Henry W. Grady, promoted industrialization, sectional reconciliation, and even racial harmony (but not equality).


Mott House today.

The city outgrew its original plan. The Springer Opera House was built on 10th Street, attracting such notables as Irish writer Oscar Wilde.



The Springer is now the official State Theater of Georgia.



Both small and large entrepreneurs immediately rebuilt their enterprises. Foundries started producing by June, and textile mills were in back in operation by December 1865. By 1870 more than 100 manufacturers operated within the city, but the small non textile companies languished in that decade. One-fifth of them failed, buffeted by the crash of 1873 and unable to compete in the new railroad-linked national market.



Textiles, on the other hand, flourished; their production expanded by 339 percent in the 1870s. William H. Young's Eagle and Phenix Company launched mills in 1866, 1869, 1872, and 1876, quadrupling its output in ten years. By 1880 only two counties in the South produced more textiles than Young's mills in Muscogee County. Locally they manufactured 80 percent of the textiles, employed 65 percent of the total labor force, and used 95 percent of the waterpower.



George Parker Swift's Muscogee Mills used the other 5 percent of the waterpower. Swift's factory began on one waterpower lot (1868 and 1880) and then expanded north of Fourteenth Street, with new mills appearing in 1887, 1904, 1916, 1926, and 1950. Young's and Swift's mills became the foundations of two dynasties. Their economic descendants (primarily W. C. Bradley and G. Gunby Jordan) eventually controlled every local textile enterprise and created seven mills, four banks, and the Columbus Power Company. Swift's family and in-laws (Epping, Illges, Kyle, Spencer, Swift, and Woodruff) developed seven mills and three banks through the 1970s.


Eagle and Phenix are Condo’s and Loft’s now.

As the city's economy expanded, industries moved into the remaining land on the East Commons, and middle-class suburbs grew in Wynnton, which was first served by streetcars and then by automobiles. At the same time, other Columbusites fought for reform.



Helen Augusta Howard, who inherited her family's home, chafed because she paid taxes without representation. Howard became a suffrage activist and established the Georgia Woman Suffrage Association in 1891.



Prince W. Greene, a local weaver was born in Columbus, Georgia, Greene brought several southern craft unions into the National Union of Textile Workers in 1898. He became the president of the National Union of Textile Workers between 1898 and 1900, and moved its national headquarters to Columbus. He then served as secretary-treasurer until the merger with the United Textile Workers of America in 1901.

Twentieth Century

Other leaders created educational and cultural institutions. Private endeavors established free kindergartens for mill children (1895) and for African Americans (1903), as well as a school for the "dinner-toters" who delivered lunches to the mills (1901)—all of which the public schools absorbed before creating a secondary industrial school (1906). The city also gained a Carnegie public library (1907).


The Chappell brothers (left to right: Lucius Henry Chappell, Thomas J. Chappell, Lamar Chappell, and Joseph Harris Chappell) were prominent citizens of Columbus; Lucius Henry Chappell was twice elected mayor. Photograph taken ca. 1890s.

Progressive mayor Lucius Henry Chappell (1897-1907 and 1911-13) modernized the city. During the Spanish-American War (1898) he lured a military training camp to town, paved and curbed downtown streets, built sewers and steel bridges, planted trees, and created the modern municipal water works, which transformed the muddy Chattahoochee into drinking water.



World War I (1917-18) brought social upheaval and long-term changes. Encouraged by the National War Labor Board, Columbus textile workers in 1918 organized and successfully struck to force the rehiring of union members. In February 1919, 7,000 Columbus operatives walked out as part of a national strike, demanding an eight-hour day.



In May 1919 anti-unionists fired on a union rally, killing one, wounding seven, and breaking the most serious attempt to organize local workers.


Columbus native Eugene James (Jacques) Bullard was the world's first black combat aviator, flying in French squadrons during World War I.

In September 1918 the U.S. War Department created Camp Benning, located on Macon Road near what is now the public library. Extensive lobbying efforts resulted in a permanent camp, Fort Benning, in 1922.



For almost twenty years it functioned primarily as a training center for infantry officers. The influx of those officers made Columbus, or at least its middle class, more worldly. During World War II (1941-45) the post assumed a more expanded mission.


The Columbus Coca-Cola Bottling Company is shown here, ca. 1938, with Coke employees and delivery trucks out front.

In 1919 Ernest Woodruff, a Columbus native and Atlanta businessman, engineered the purchase of Coca-Cola from the Candler family for $25 million. W. C. Bradley, who was chair of the board of Coca-Cola for twenty-seven years, served as Woodruff's partner, selling stock to friends and acquaintances, primarily in the Chattahoochee Valley. That investment still pays significant dividends to the community. Robert Woodruff is where the real story of Coca Cola lies.


Woodruff memorial Westview Cemetery Atlanta.

In 1922 Columbus became the first major southern city to adopt the commission–city manager form of government in large measure because the newly enfranchised women supported this reform and served on the first commission. In 1926 the editor of the Columbus Enquirer-Sun, Julian Harris, son of Joel Chandler Harris, won a Pulitzer Prize for his fight against the revived Ku Klux Klan at both the state and local level.


Julian Harris, editor and co-owner, with his wife, Julia, of the Columbus Enquirer-Sun, reads mail at his desk in the late 1920s. Harris, the son of Georgia folklorist Joel Chandler Harris, and his wife jointly won a Pulitzer Prize in 1926 for their reporting in the Enquirer-Sun on state officials with ties to the Ku Klux Klan.

The city's economy diversified in the 1920s. The Tom Huston Peanut Company (later named Tom's Foods) opened and began selling Tom's Toasted Peanuts.


Tom's Foods

The neighboring company of Claud Hatcher began producing Chero-Cola in 1905, Nehi in 1924, and Royal Crown Cola in the 1930s. By the 1920s, however, Columbus lost control of its most important asset—the Chattahoochee's waterpower. Goat Rock Dam (1912) and Bartlett's Ferry Dam (1926), north of the city, produced electricity for Columbus's rivals: West Point, LaGrange, and even Atlanta.



By 1927 the city had entered the Great Depression as the demand for cotton textiles plummeted. In the 1930s several Columbus mills borrowed money from New York banks to continue running. Construction at Fort Benning also provided much-needed jobs. By 1940 Fort Benning was brimming with activity. In neighboring Phenix City, Alabama, bar girls, brothels, and gaming tables fleeced soldiers and earned it the title of "Sin City, USA." These rackets continued until the 1954 assassination of the Alabama attorney general–elect, Albert Patterson, finally produced a concerted cleanup.



 

Meanwhile, a Greater Columbus Committee outlined new goals. These resulted in consolidating the county and city schools in 1949 and establishing Columbus College (later Columbus State University) in a closed mill in 1958. Until that time Columbus was the largest southern city without a college. In 1961 the Columbus Area Vocational-Technical School (later Columbus Technical College) was founded.


Columbus Historic District

During the 1940s, a more significant movement—which eventually liberated the city and the South—was occurring at the grassroots level. Primus King, a local African American, challenged the all-white Democratic Party primary in 1944, and the federal courts ordered the integration of that election. A few years later, the 1956 shooting death of Thomas Brewer, a local leader of the civil rights movement, caused some of the black elite to leave, but those who stayed continued the struggle.


Thomas Brewer

In 1964 Albert Thompson won a seat in the legislature, and other African Americans followed him into local offices, some as Republicans.


A picture of Downtown Columbus, Georgia in 1950.

J. R. Allen, a young businessman, organized a biracial Republican Party and became mayor in 1968. He led the consolidation of the city and county governments—the first such action in Georgia. The city doubled its size in 1970 and absorbed the remaining county areas the next year because Allen convinced the legislature to hold referendums that favored the city. The new government began in 1971 with Allen as mayor and A. J. McClung, an African American, as mayor pro tempore. The city government became consolidated with the county in 1971, the first of its kind in Georgia (and one of only 16 in the U.S. at the time).


The Muscogee County Courthouse in 1941, which was demolished in 1973.


Government Center - Columbus Georgia Consolidated Government

Recent Development



By the 1970s the economy had changed. Local businessmen stopped excluding new industries that might raise local wages and began seeking new manufacturers, such as Dolly Madison Bakery (1970) and Pratt and Whitney (1984), which made jet engine parts. But local initiative created the most dynamic enterprises - Aflac Insurance, Synovus Financial Corporation, and Total System Services. Total System Services (TSYS), credit card processors, destroyed the old Muscogee factories to build their new campus, but their new clerical mills paid better wages. Also Columbus is home to Carmike Cinemas.


The Rankin House at 1440 Second Avenue was built for James Rankin, a planter and the owner of the Rankin Hotel and the Rankin Realty Company. The restored house, ca. 1850-70, is now a museum.

The historic preservation movement began in the mid-1960s, when the 1871 Springer Opera House, a National Historic Landmark and now the State Theatre of Georgia, was threatened with demolition. The young activists who saved it then organized the Historic Columbus Foundation and created historic districts in the southwest corner and the uptown area of the original city and in the Wynnton suburbs, and the National Historic Landmark industrial district along the river.



A continuity of historic space has been preserved in the South Commons (1828), the site of such public recreation as early horse and automobile racing. It now includes Golden Park (a minor league baseball park).


Golden Park, Columbus' oldest baseball park.

There is the A. J. McClung Memorial Stadium (the venue for the Auburn University-University of Georgia football game from 1916 to 1958 and for both the Tuskegee University-Morehouse College and Fort Valley State University –Albany State University games today.



Municipal projects have included construction of a softball complex, which hosted the 1996 Olympic softball competition.


Gold Medal USA.

With these improvements, residents and businesses have been attracted to formerly blighted areas. construction of the Chattahoochee RiverWalk; construction of the National Civil War Naval Museum at Port Columbus, construction of the Coca-Cola Space Science Center, the expansion of the Columbus Museum, and road improvements to include a new downtown bridge crossing the Chattahoochee River to Phenix City.


Coke in Space?

The Civic Center (1996)stages professional hockey, basketball, and arena football.



The historical importance of Fort Benning to Columbus was highlighted in 2009 with the opening of the National Infantry Museum and Soldier Center, which is located on city property just outside the post's gates.


National Infantry Museum and Soldier Center

Columbus has also established itself as a center for the fine and performing arts. During the late 1990s the Columbus Challenge raised more than $100 million ($85 million in private donations) to enhance the arts, improve existing cultural venues, and build the stunning River Center for the Performing Arts, which houses Columbus State University's (CSU) music department and three stages (symphony, organ recital, and studio).


Don’t forget the recently added Jonathan Hatcher Skateboard Park.

Visitors looking for native culinary treats enjoy fried catfish, scrambled dogs (a chopped-up hot dog and bun on oyster crackers completely smothered with chili), smoked pork barbecue with mustard-based sauce, and "country captain" (fried chicken cooked in a tomato sauce with almonds and currants).


Country Captain

According to the 2010 U.S. census, the population of Columbus is 189,885, the third-largest city in the state.

By 2003 Columbus had renewed its appreciation for the Chattahoochee River. Under federal court order to build a combined sewer-overflow system, the Columbus Water Works began developing Riverwalk, which is to extend for twenty miles, from Fort Benning, south of town, to Lake Oliver to the north. Once the reason for the city's establishment, the Chattahoochee River has once again become the most distinctive feature of this city.



A few more images of Columbus………


This collage consists of two statues and a kiln that represent the three Cs of Columbus industry: cotton, clay, and Coca-Cola. The farmer represents agriculture; Pemberton, the inventor of Coca-Cola, sits on the bench; and the kiln was donated by Bickerstaff Brick Company. All three structures are located in Heritage Park.


Columbus has always been know as City of Fountains.


Fireworks in Downtown Columbus, Georgia in 2009

Top Row Dawg addendum since last post. Jane Russell lived in two homes in Columbus when her husband was stationed at Fort Benning 1943.

Part 1

Part 2

OK we did Augusta and Columbus fall lines. We filled up on the rich history of both cities. We now get ready for the biggest game of the year always. I saved the Island for one last trip to the coast. I will be there for Frat Beach with my sister and her family, my parents, my daughters, leaving Thursday. Dawgs Dawgs Dawgs

Kayak Girl with Dog is today's GNW Gal. Adding three women in Kayaks so we can vote;.