50 Fun Facts About Columbia SC

Which two rivers meet at Columbia to form the Congaree?

The city grew up at the fall line, the head of navigation on the Santee river system, roughly halfway between the Atlantic and the Blue Ridge.

In what year did South Carolina's General Assembly approve creating Columbia as a new capital?

Legislators wanted a capital more central than Charleston, and the assembly first met in the new city in 1790.

Which surveyor laid out Columbia's two-mile-square grid, making it one of the first US planned cities?

His plan came five years before L'Enfant's Washington, with 150-foot-wide Assembly and Senate streets and 400 blocks.

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

The name Columbia itself is a poetic personification of the United States.

Which South Carolina city is more populous than Columbia, making Columbia the state's second-largest?

The city had 136,632 residents at the 2020 census, but its six-county metro area is home to nearly 900,000.

Columbia is the seat of which county?

Parts of the city spill into Lexington and Kershaw counties, and Richland Library was named National Library of the Year in 2001.

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

The area was then part of the Cofitachequi chiefdom of the Mississippian culture.

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

A smallpox outbreak sent the delegates on to the coast, where South Carolina became the first state to secede.

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

Roughly a third of the buildings were destroyed; modern historians say no single cause was to blame, though burning cotton bales in the streets did not help.

Roughly what fraction of Columbia's buildings were destroyed in the fires of February 1865?

Retreating Confederates had ordered the city's huge cotton stocks dragged into the streets to be burned so they would not fall to the enemy.

What was the city's minor-league baseball team called before it moved from Georgia in 2015?

They arrived from Savannah, where they had been the Sand Gnats, and threw a combined no-hitter in only their third game in 2016.

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

The Mets dropped the affiliation in the 2021 minor-league shake-up after five seasons.

Fort Jackson in Columbia trains roughly what share of all soldiers entering the US Army each year?

About 35,000 recruits pass through basic training there annually, and the post covers around two-thirds of Columbia's land area.

The Army post on the city's east side was first established under what name in 1917?

It closed after the First World War, was reactivated in 1940 and is named for President Andrew Jackson.

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

Governor John Drayton pushed it through to promote harmony between the Lowcountry and the Backcountry; classes began in 1805 with nine students.

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

He debuted at Homecoming in 1980 as the son of Big Spur, a gangly earlier mascot deemed too unwieldy.

In which athletic conference do the South Carolina Gamecocks compete?

Football, baseball and both basketball programs draw some of the biggest crowds in the state.

Under what name did the Gamecocks' football ground, built with WPA money, open in 1934?

It replaced the wooden Melton Field and was renamed for Martha Williams Brice after her estate funded the 1971-72 expansion.

Roughly how many spectators did Williams-Brice Stadium hold as of the 2025 season?

Its ends were filled in during the 1940s and 1950s to make a bowl, and it ranks among the loudest venues in college football.

Which venue, opened in 2002 as the Carolina Center, is South Carolina's largest indoor arena?

It seats 18,000 and opened with a women's basketball game against Clemson that charged a dollar a ticket.

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

A Philadelphia point guard and Virginia star, she took over the Gamecocks in 2008 and won the program's first title in 2017.

Which band formed at the University of South Carolina in 1986 after one member heard another singing in the showers?

Darius Rucker and Mark Bryan first played covers as the Wolf Brothers; Cracked Rear View went 22-times platinum.

The band's owl-and-fish name came from what?

One friend's big round glasses made him look like an owl; the other's puffy cheeks earned him the fish name.

Roughly how many visitors a year does Riverbanks Zoo & Garden, South Carolina's largest gated attraction, draw?

Not bad for a metro area of under 900,000 people; it opened in the 1970s and has won the Southeast's top-attraction award four times.

In what year did Riverbanks Zoo open?

A special-purpose district shared by the city and two counties runs it, and part of the grounds lie in West Columbia.

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

It has some of the tallest trees in the eastern US, including a 169-foot loblolly pine, and later lost the word Swamp from its name.

Congaree was upgraded from a national monument to a national park in which year?

Senators Strom Thurmond and Fritz Hollings had backed the original 1976 protection after a grassroots campaign against renewed logging.

Roughly how many miles of shoreline does Lake Murray, northwest of Columbia, have?

The 50,000-acre lake was impounded in the late 1920s for hydroelectric power and became a boating and fishing magnet.

Which state agencies and offices are housed in and around the South Carolina State House?

The current building was redesigned by John Niernsee in 1855 after the first architect was fired for fraud, and it was still unfinished when Union shells hit it.

What happened at the State House grounds in 2015 after the mass shooting at a Black church in Charleston?

The flag had been moved from the dome to the grounds in 2000; the same year brought historic flooding that displaced a Gamecocks home game.

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

He served until 2022; his predecessor's era saw the Congaree Vista warehouse district turned into a restaurant and gallery quarter.

What is the highest temperature ever recorded in Columbia?

It was measured at the University of South Carolina on June 29, 2012, in a city that markets itself as Famously Hot.

In what year was the Columbia Canal built, using the labour of indentured Irishmen?

Railroads arrived in 1842 and killed the canal traffic, but its water power made gunpowder in the Civil War and later ran the textile mills.

Which two historically Black colleges were founded in Columbia in 1870 during Reconstruction?

Benedict began on a former plantation bought with $13,000 from Bathsheba Benedict of Rhode Island; Allen moved to the city in 1880 and honours the AME church's founder.

Which downtown venue, built in 1930, hosted Louis Armstrong for $1.20 a ticket and Elvis Presley in 1956?

The Georgian Revival hall by Lafaye and Lafaye seats about 3,100 and joined the National Register in 2005.

Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Columbia's oldest surviving sanctuary, was modelled on which English church?

Legend says parishioners put papier-mâché crosses on the roof in 1865 hoping the Catholic Union commander would spare it; the church survived, the rectory did not.

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

Built in 1823 for Ainsley Hall, who died before it was finished, its 1967 restoration kicked off Columbia's preservation movement.

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

The Woodrow Wilson Boyhood Home was among the landmarks preserved after the Robert Mills House restoration inspired the movement.

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

The 17th Bombardment Group was flying B-25 Mitchells out of what is now Columbia Metropolitan Airport when it was asked for volunteers for an extremely hazardous job.

Which Columbia-born civil rights leader was South Carolina's only full-time Black public health worker in the 1930s?

A graduate of one of the city's Black colleges, she was pushed out of the state Tuberculosis Association in 1942 partly for her NAACP work.

Which Entertainment Tonight host grew up in Columbia and graduated from Irmo High School?

She was born in Hartsville and studied at the University of South Carolina before joining ET in 1984.

Which Sex and the City star grew up in Columbia and graduated from A.C. Flora High School in 1983?

Born in Boulder, Colorado, she was cast in a Workshop Theatre production of Snow White at nine and later trained at Rutgers.

Which downtown sculpture by the artist Blue Sky was billed as the world's largest fire hydrant?

Erected in 2001 on Taylor Street, the giant hydrant has since been removed with no new home decided.

Which ensemble gave the first performance at Columbia's Koger Center for the Arts in January 1989?

The 2,256-seat centre is named for philanthropists Ira and Nancy Koger and hosts everything from the State of the State address to a bodybuilding championship.

Which daily newspaper has served Columbia since 1891?

Charleston's Post and Courier bought the alt-weekly Free Times in 2016 and folded it into a Columbia edition as an arts section.

The University of South Carolina's student radio station WUSC-FM has broadcast since which year?

Columbia is also home to the headquarters of South Carolina Educational Television and South Carolina Public Radio.

Which Amtrak train stops daily in Columbia on its way between New York and Miami?

The station sits at 850 Pulaski Street; the Southern Railway's Skyland Special once stopped at Union Station until 1959.

Which Ghanaian capital is one of Columbia's seven sister cities?

The others are Kaiserslautern, Cluj-Napoca, Plovdiv, Chelyabinsk, Yibin and Taichung, plus Columbia, Mississippi after mutual disaster aid.

On August 21, 1962, eight downtown Columbia chain stores did what for the first time?

The University of South Carolina admitted its first Black students the next year, and Newsweek praised the city's progress in 1965.

How many counties make up the Columbia metropolitan statistical area?

Calhoun, Fairfield, Kershaw, Lexington, Richland and Saluda together held about 880,000 people in 2025, second in the state to Greenville.