The commissioners designed a town of 400 blocks in a 2-mile (3 km) square along the river. With competition later from faster railroad traffic, it ceased operation around 1850. It was first chartered in 1786 and completed in 1800, making it one of the earliest canals in the United States. This connected the Santee and Cooper rivers in a 22-mile-long (35 km) section. After remaining under the direct government of the legislature for the first two decades of its existence, Columbia was incorporated as a village in 1805 and then as a city in 1854.Ĭolumbia received a large stimulus to development when it was connected in a direct water route to Charleston by the Santee Canal. The State Legislature first met there in 1790. The site was chosen as the new state capital in 1786 due to its central location in the state. One legislator insisted on the name "Washington", but "Columbia" won by a vote of 11–7 in the state senate. According to published accounts, Senator Gervais said he hoped that "in this town we should find refuge under the wings of COLUMBIA", for that was the name which he wished it to be called. Considerable argument occurred over the name for the new city. Entrepreneurs and later industrialists established mills in such areas, as the water flowing downriver, often over falls, provided power to run equipment.Īfter the American Revolutionary War and United States independence, State Senator John Lewis Gervais of the town of Ninety Six introduced a bill that was approved by the legislature on March 22, 1786, to create a new state capital. Beyond the fall line, the river is unnavigable for boats sailing upstream. The fall line is often marked by rapids at the places where the river cuts sharply down to lower levels in the Tidewater or Low Country of the coastal plain. Like many other significant early settlements in colonial America, Columbia is on the fall line of the Piedmont region. In 1754 the colonial government in South Carolina established a ferry to connect the fort with the growing European settlements on the higher ground on the east bank. It was at the fall line and the head of navigation in the Santee River system. The settlers established a frontier fort and fur trading post named after the Congaree, on the west bank of the Congaree River. ĭuring the colonial era, European settlers encountered the Congaree in this area, who inhabited several villages along the Congaree River. The expedition produced the earliest written historical records of this area, which was part of the regional Cofitachequi chiefdom of the Mississippian culture. In May 1540, a Spanish expedition led by Hernando de Soto traversed what is now Columbia while moving northward on exploration of the interior of the Southeast. 11.3 Renewable energy and climate goalsįormer slave quarters at the Hale–Elmore–Seibels House in downtown Columbia.5.1.1 Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center.Air Force and is used as a training base for the 169th Fighter Wing of the South Carolina Air National Guard. Twenty miles to the east of the city is McEntire Joint National Guard Base, which is operated by the U.S. Columbia is the site of Fort Jackson, the largest United States Army installation for Basic Combat Training. The area has benefited from Congressional support for Southern military installations. The first six states to secede were those whose planters held the most enslaved African Americans these were slave societies.Ĭolumbia is home to the University of South Carolina, the state's flagship public university and the largest in the state. In 1860, the South Carolina Secession Convention took place here delegates voted for secession, making this the first state to leave the Union in the events leading up to the Civil War. As the state capital, Columbia is the site of the South Carolina State House, the center of government for the state. It lies at the confluence of the Saluda River and the Broad River, which merge at Columbia to form the Congaree River. The city is located about 13 miles (21 km) northwest of the geographic center of South Carolina, and is the primary city of the Midlands region of the state. Columbia is often abbreviated as Cola, leading to its nickname as "Soda City." The name Columbia is a poetic term used for the United States, derived from the name of Christopher Columbus, who explored for the Spanish Crown. It is the center of the Columbia metropolitan statistical area, which had a population of 829,470 and is the 72nd-largest metropolitan statistical area in the nation. The city serves as the county seat of Richland County, and a portion of the city extends into neighboring Lexington County. Census, it is the second-largest city in South Carolina. With a population of 136,632 as of the 2020 U.S.