47 Fun Facts About Columbia SC

Which two rivers meet at Columbia to form the Congaree?

The Broad and the Saluda meet at the fall line, where rapids block boats heading upriver, so the spot grew into a frontier crossing and trading post long before Columbia existed.

Why did South Carolina's lawmakers found Columbia as a new capital in 1786?

Moving the capital to be closer to inland farmers was a compromise meant to calm the feud between small Upcountry farmers and the Lowcountry's coastal planters.

What set Columbia's 1786 town plan apart from older American towns?

Very wide streets were the plan's hallmark: its two main avenues ran 150 feet across, and lots were sold to settlers while sites were held for public buildings.

Columbia's nickname "Soda City" comes from what?

'Soda City' plays on 'Cola', the local shortening of Columbia's name, a pun on the soft drink; the Saturday Soda City Market on Main Street takes its name from it.

Which historically Black college in Columbia was founded by the African Methodist Episcopal Church?

Allen University began in 1870 as Payne Institute in rural Cokesbury, then moved to Columbia in 1880 and took the name of Richard Allen, the AME Church's founder.

Columbia is the seat of which county?

Columbia became Richland's county seat when a 1799 law ordered the district court to meet there, so the capital houses state, county and city government.

Which Spanish explorer's expedition passed through the site of Columbia, SC in May 1540?

Hernando de Soto's army was hunting Cofitachequi, a chiefdom rumoured to be rich, whose female chief received the Spaniards with food and freshwater pearls.

The South's earliest secession convention met in Columbia on December 17, 1860, in which building?

First Baptist Church hosted the opening session, but a smallpox outbreak moved the convention to Charleston, where South Carolina voted to secede on December 20.

Which Union general's army captured Columbia on February 17, 1865, the night much of the city burned?

William T. Sherman's army marched in after Columbia's mayor rode out under a flag of surrender; Union shells also scarred the unfinished State House.

What goods lay piled in Columbia's streets when Union troops arrived in February 1865?

Cotton bales were already burning in places, and that night fire destroyed a third of the city, though who started the blaze is still disputed.

Which Savannah, Georgia, minor-league team moved to Columbia after the 2015 season and became the Fireflies?

The Sand Gnats left Savannah's old Grayson Stadium for a new ballpark on Columbia's Bull Street, bringing professional baseball back to South Carolina's capital.

Which Major League club became the Columbia Fireflies' affiliate in the 2021 shake-up?

The Kansas City Royals stepped in after baseball's 2021 minor-league overhaul led the New York Mets to drop Columbia as a farm club.

Which kind of training is Columbia's big Army post best known for?

Basic combat training is the post's main mission: it trains roughly half of all soldiers entering the Army each year, and in 1968 Columbia annexed it into the city.

Columbia's big Army post was first established under what name in 1917?

Camp Jackson, named for President Andrew Jackson, reopened in 1939 and became Fort Jackson in 1940; a postwar plan to close it was halted by the Korean War.

Under what name was the state's flagship university founded in Columbia in 1801?

South Carolina College opened in 1805; during Reconstruction it admitted Black students, until white leaders shut it in 1877 and reopened it as an all-white college.

What is the name of the University of South Carolina's costumed rooster mascot?

Cocky debuted at the 1980 Homecoming game as the 'son' of Big Spur, the earlier rooster mascot, and then replaced him as the school's official mascot.

In which athletic conference does the University of South Carolina compete?

The SEC split into two six-team divisions when South Carolina and Arkansas joined in the early 1990s, two decades after South Carolina quit the ACC in 1971.

Under what name did the University of South Carolina's football stadium, built with WPA money, open in 1934?

Columbia Municipal Stadium became Carolina Stadium after the city deeded it to the university in 1941, and took the Williams-Brice name in 1972 after Martha Williams-Brice's bequest paid for an expansion.

Which venue on the University of South Carolina's Columbia campus opened in 2002?

Colonial Life Arena replaced the Carolina Coliseum as the Gamecocks' basketball home, and the old Coliseum was later turned into practice courts for both basketball teams.

Which coach led South Carolina women's basketball to a perfect 2024 national title?

Dawn Staley left Temple in 2008 to rebuild a struggling South Carolina program, which beat Mississippi State in 2017 for its first national title.

Which rock band, formed by University of South Carolina students in 1986, grew into a national phenomenon in the 1990s?

Hootie & the Blowfish signed with Atlantic Records, and their 1994 debut album, Cracked Rear View, became one of the best-selling albums in US history.

What was the South Carolina–Clemson football game called when it was played during Columbia's State Fair week?

Big Thursday ended after 1959 because Clemson wanted the game to alternate between the two campuses, partly so it could share in the money the game brought in.

What did Columbia's Riverbanks Zoo add to its grounds in 1995?

A botanical garden opened in 1995, and Riverbanks later built an aerial lift to carry guests across the river between the zoo and the garden.

What problem did Columbia's Riverbanks Zoo face soon after opening in 1974?

It couldn't pay its own way on visitor income alone, so a support society was created to help raise money for the zoo.

Congaree National Park, southeast of Columbia, protects the largest remaining US tract of what?

Old-growth bottomland hardwood forest here is often called a swamp, but it is mostly floodplain that the river covers only from time to time.

What threat spurred the grassroots campaign that led to Congaree's federal protection in 1976?

Logging: the Beidler family's lumber company had stopped cutting the tract by the 1910s, and renewed Beidler logging decades later sparked the campaign.

Why was Lake Murray, the big lake northwest of Columbia, created around 1930?

To generate electricity, a power company dammed the river and moved about 5,000 people, along with churches and schools, out of the valley it flooded.

The South Carolina State House is built mainly of which stone?

Granite construction began under architect John Niernsee in the 1850s, but the Civil War stalled the work, and the dome wasn't added until the early 1900s.

What changed at South Carolina's State House in 2015?

The Confederate battle flag flew atop the dome from 1962, moved to a Confederate monument on the grounds in 2000, and was permanently removed by a 2015 law.

Who became Columbia's first African American mayor in 2010?

Stephen K. Benjamin, a former state cabinet official, won a 2010 special election, and after the 2017 Las Vegas shooting he initiated a city ban on bump stocks.

What natural disaster struck Columbia in October 2015?

Historic flooding, from rain on the scale of a 1,000-year event, hit the Columbia area, so South Carolina moved its home football game against LSU to Baton Rouge.

After railroads took away its river traffic, what did the Columbia Canal become?

A power supply for industry: its water ran a Confederate gunpowder works during the Civil War, and an 1891 rebuild made it a major supplier of power to the city.

Which downtown Columbia concert hall opened in 1930?

Township Auditorium hosted everything from concerts to wrestling, but it kept Black and white audiences apart until the civil rights era.

Columbia's Trinity Episcopal Cathedral was modelled on which English church?

York Minster was the model for architect Edward Brickell White's Gothic Revival design, and the church escaped the fire that swept Columbia in 1865.

The Robert Mills House on Blanding Street was designed by the architect of which national landmark?

The Washington Monument's architect, Robert Mills, designed the 1823 mansion for merchant Ainsley Hall, who died before it was finished, so it became a theological seminary instead.

Which US president spent part of his boyhood in a Columbia house that is now a museum?

Woodrow Wilson's parents built the house around 1871, the only home they ever owned; it's now a museum of the Reconstruction Era rather than of Wilson himself.

Bomber crews training at Columbia's airfield in early 1942 volunteered for which famous mission?

The Doolittle Raid on Japan launched 16 B-25 bombers from an aircraft carrier in April 1942; it did little damage but gave Americans a huge morale boost.

Which Columbia-born civil rights leader directed the South Carolina Tuberculosis Association's work in Black communities from 1931?

Modjeska Monteith Simkins lost that job in 1942 as her NAACP activism grew, and she went on to aid Briggs v. Elliott, a school case that became part of Brown v. Board of Education.

Which TV host graduated from the University of South Carolina's journalism school in Columbia?

Leeza Gibbons, after her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, started a charity that supports people caring for family members with memory disorders.

Which Sex and the City star grew up in Columbia, where her father taught psychology at the University of South Carolina?

Kristin Davis first broke through as scheming Brooke on Melrose Place, a villain killed off after one season, before playing sweet Charlotte York.

Which 1930s dance craze began when University of South Carolina students copied steps from a Black Columbia nightclub?

The Big Apple swept the nation in 1937, but Columbia's dance-craze fame proved fleeting, and by the early 1940s the dance was a past fad.

Which museum occupies the former Columbia Mills building on Gervais Street?

The South Carolina State Museum moved in after the mill closed in 1981 and its owner donated the building to the state; it had been an early all-electric textile mill.

Which daily newspaper has served Columbia since 1891?

The State was founded in 1891 by the Gonzales brothers; in 1903 politician James H. Tillman fatally shot editor N. G. Gonzales, yet was acquitted of murder.

What is the historic quadrangle at the heart of the University of South Carolina's campus called?

The Horseshoe emptied when students left to fight in the Civil War, so the college closed in 1862 and its buildings served as a military hospital.

Which woman was put off a Columbia bus in 1954, seventeen months before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat?

Sarah Mae Flemming sued the bus company, and an appeals court ruling from her lawsuit was later cited in the Montgomery bus case.

In August 1962, what did downtown Columbia stores do for the first time?

Served Black customers at lunch counters, after student sit-ins began in 1960; the Supreme Court later overturned the convictions of two students jailed at an Eckerd's counter.

Which painter took a teaching job in Columbia in 1915 and began making abstract drawings there?

Georgia O'Keeffe mailed some of those drawings to a former classmate, who took them to Alfred Stieglitz, and he showed them at his New York gallery, 291, in 1916.