Columbia, Pennsylvania This article is about the borough in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
Columbia, Pennsylvania .
Borough of Columbia Location of Columbia in Lancaster County Location of Columbia in Lancaster County Borough of Columbia is positioned in Pennsylvania Borough of Columbia - Borough of Columbia Location of Columbia in Pennsylvania Columbia, formerly Wright's Ferry, is a borough (town) in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, 28 miles (45 km) southeast of Harrisburg on the left (east) bank of the Susquehanna River, athwart from Wrightsville and York County and just south of U.S.
Establishment of the eponymous Wright's Ferry, the first commercial Susquehanna crossing in the region, inflamed territorial conflict with neighboring Maryland but brought expansion and prosperity to the small town, which was just a several votes shy of becoming the new United States' capital.
Although besieged for a short while by Civil War destruction, Columbia remained a lively center of transport and trade throughout the 19th century, once serving as a end of the Pennsylvania Canal.
1.2.2 Columbia's part in the Civil War The region around present-day Columbia was originally populated by Native American tribes, most prominently the Susquehannocks, who migrated to the region between 1575 and 1600 after separating from the Iroquois Confederacy.
They established villages just south of Columbia, in what is now Washington Boro, as well as claiming at least hunting lands as far south as Maryland and Northern Virginia. Captain John Smith reported on the Susquehannock in glowing superlatives when a traveling group visited Jamestown, Virginia; he estimated their numbers to be about 2,000 in the early 1600s.
The Province of Maryland fought a declared war for nearly a decade, signing a peace in 1632, against the Susquehannock Confederation who were allied to New Sweden and furnishing fire arms to the Susquehannocks in exchange for furs. The American Heritage Book of Indians reports the tribe occupied the entire Susquehanna Drainage Basin from the divide with the Mohawk River in lower New York State and part of the west side of the Chesapeake Bay in the Province of Virginia, while noting the confederation numbered between 10-20,000 in the mid-1660s when they came close to wiping out two Nations of the Iroquois. An virulent epidemic hit the Susquehannock suburbs during 1668 or 1669 and is believed to have lasted or recurred or morphed to plagues of other disease possibly killing up to 90% of the Amerindian nations citizens .
In that decade, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and New York all claimed the Susquehannock lands of the Wyoming Valley, where the remnants of the country were to recoil into a several scant under populated towns.
Small bands moved west athwart the Susquehanna to new villages such as Conestoga Town and some are believed to have trekked through the gaps of the Allegheny to the virtually empty lands beyond the Alleghenies, perhaps mingling there with other Iroquoian citizens s such as the Seneca, Wenro and Erie citizens s forming the new clans and suburbs as the (new) Mingo citizens whose small bands known to be present in Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio in the early 1800s. In 1724, John Wright, an English Quaker, traveled to the Columbia region (then a part of Chester County) to explore the territory and proselytize to a Native American tribe, the Shawnee, who had established a settlement along Shawnee Creek.
When Wright returned in 1726 with companions Robert Barber and Samuel Blunston, they began developing the area, Wright building a home about a hundred yards from the edge of the Susquehanna River in the region of today's South Second and Union Streets.
Susanna Wright later assembled Wright's Ferry Mansion, the earliest existing home in Columbia, dating 1738.
The home still stands, athwart from the Columbia Wastewater Treatment Plant, and is the second earliest in the borough (after Wright's Ferry Mansion).
In 1729, after Wright had petitioned William Penn's son to problematic a new county, the provincial government took territory from Chester County to establish Lancaster County, the fourth county in Pennsylvania.
In 1730, John Wright was granted a patent to operate a ferry athwart the Susquehanna River, later established (with Barber and Blunston) as Wright's Ferry.
He also assembled a ferry home and a two-story log tavern on the easterly shore, north of Locust Street, on Front Street.
Wright's Ferry was positioned immediately south of the present-day Veterans' Memorial Bridge along Route 462.
In later years, Wright rented the ferry to the rest before finally selling it.
Traffic heading west from Lancaster, Philadelphia, and other close-by towns regularly traveled through Columbia, using the ferry to cross the Susquehanna.
Wright's Ferry was the first convenient crossing of the Susquehanna River in the region.
At the time, however, southern Pennsylvania above the 40th alongside was claimed by the Province of Maryland, which took especial interest in the non-urban area around the ferry.
Through his trusteeship, the town's first water distribution fitness (later the Columbia Water Company) was established, as well as the Washington Institute (the town's first school of higher learning) and the Locust Street Park, positioned at what is now Locust Street and Route 462.
In the spring of 1788, Samuel Wright had the region surveyed and formally laid out the town into 160 building lots, which were distributed by lottery at 15 shillings per ticket.
Wright and town people retitled the town "Columbia" with respect to Christopher Columbus in the hope of western the new U.S.
Later, Columbia narrowly missed becoming the capital of Pennsylvania; Harrisburg was chosen instead, being closer to the state's geographical center.
Columbia Market House Columbia became an incorporated borough in 1814, formed out of Hempfield Township.
The same year, the world's longest veiled bridge was assembled across the Susquehanna to Wrightsville, facilitating traffic flow athwart the river and reducing the need for the ferry.
A replacement veiled bridge, the Pennsylvania Railroad Bridge, was assembled within two years.
In February 1826, the Pennsylvania state council allowed the package of legislation known as the Main Line of Public Works with the goal of connecting the width and breadth of Pennsylvania by the best and most reliable transit known, water transport.
$300,000 in the funding was for the assembly of a navigation that would be called the Pennsylvania Canal along the Susquehanna's easterly shore to bypass rapids and shallows and make the river navigable anywhere along its route.
Also, as conceived, another 82 mile canal would be dug from the end in Columbia to connect suburbs to the east with a end on the Delaware River at Philadelphia.
Across the Alleghenies, another canal would connect the Allegheny Portage Railroad crossing the mountain peaks) to the Ohio River and the Mississippi River, ensuring the Port of Philadelphia would dominate inland trade and manufacturing in the exploding trans-Appalachian territories.
It started at Columbia, stretching 40 miles (64 km) north to the junction of the Juniata River.
The intent was that goods and travelers could use the canal fitness to go west from Columbia to Pittsburgh, Lake Erie, Ohio and [present-day] West Virginia along the Juniata Division, or by taking the Main Susquehanna northwards (Northern Division) reach north Central Pennsylvania and into lower New York State.
When that was reported, the Pennsylvania Canal Commission came up with a new plan, one using the right of way authorized to build one of these newfangled stockyards s that were making news.
Their solution was the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad, one of the first common carrier commercial stockyards s to operate in the United States.
Double-tracked, it utilized two inclined plane cable stockyards s at steep rises near either end, and except for bypasses of that older technology unneeded with more powerful locomotives, the P&CR trackage is still in use today, as it passed to the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1857, along with most of the Pennsylvania Canal.
The canal was originally prepared to extend south from Columbia on the east side of the river, but small-town property owners objected.
Instead, a two-tiered towpath was constructed along the south side of the bridge to transport boats athwart the river using horse and mule teams.
Several years later, a small dam was constructed athwart the river to form a pool that allowed steamboats to tow the canal boats.
The Columbia Canal finally closed in 1901, the same year that Wright's Ferry ceased to operate.
During this time, Columbia also became a stop on the Underground Railroad.
Built by James Moore and John Evans at a cost of $157,300, this bridge, too, appreciateed the distinct ion of being the world's longest veiled bridge.
This year also saw assembly of the first stockyards line linking Columbia and Philadelphia, which later became part of the Pennsylvania Railroad.
Named the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad, it officially opened in October, 1834.
By 1852, regular rail transit from Columbia to Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Harrisburg made the town the commercial center for the region halfway between the county seats of Lancaster and York.
On June 28, 1863, amid the Gettysburg Campaign, the replacement veiled bridge was burned by Columbia inhabitants and the Pennsylvania state militia to prevent Confederate soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia from entering Lancaster County.
The burning of the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge thwarted one of Lee's goals for the invasion of Pennsylvania, and General Gordon later claimed the skirmish at Wrightsville reinforced the erroneous Confederate belief that the only defensive forces on hand were inefficient small-town militia, an attitude that carried over to the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg.
After the state of war bridge burning, a tugboat, Columbia, was used to tow canal boats athwart the river.
The next bridge, the Pennsylvania Railroad Bridge, was a steel open bridge which carried the tracks of the Pennsylvania Railroad and a two-lane roadway for cars.
Trolley service for the borough and encircling area was established in 1893, allowing Columbians to take favor of economic opportunities in Lancaster and other close-by towns.
By the mid-19th century, Columbia had turn into a busy transit hub with its ferry, bridge, canal, barns and wharves.
From about 1854 to 1900, an industrialized complex existed in and around Columbia, Marietta and Wrightsville that encompassed 11 anthracite iron furnaces and related structures, as well as canal and barns facilities servicing them.
Since northeastern Pennsylvania was a rich origin of anthracite coal, anthracite-fired furnaces using locally available iron ores were assembled throughout easterly Pennsylvania, helping to make the state a prestige in iron manufacturing in the latter half of the 19th century.
Lancaster County also became a prestige in pig iron manufacturing amid this time, with the river towns' complex of furnaces contributing decidedly to its output.
By this time Wright's Ferry had ceased its operations, having been supplanted by rail and bridge traffic.
In 1930, yet another bridge, the Veterans Memorial Bridge, was opened to advancement traffic flow athwart the Susquehanna.
It first opened as a toll bridge; to avoid the toll, in the coldest winter months some daring motorists would cross on the firmly frozen river.
The start of the 20th century brought economic challenge to Columbia as small-town industries declined.
In 1906, the Pennsylvania Railroad opened a new facility in Enola, athwart the river from Harrisburg, which decreased the significance of Columbia's barns .
The Wright's Ferry Bridge, which opened in 1972, only served to divert traffic around Columbia.
The expansion and prosperity experienced in some Lancaster County suburbs bypassed Columbia for the remainder of the 20th century.
Although the United States Enumeration Bureau reported that as of the last year of the 20th century, the populace of Columbia had been only 10,311 citizens , by 2010 this figure had grown to 10,400.
The Susquehanna River flows past the Borough of Columbia into the Chesapeake Bay.
For over half a century, Columbia has been home to the command posts of the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors (NAWCC), whose ground on Poplar Street includes a clock tower, clock exhibition, library, research and development office, and "School of Horology," for training experienced clock and watch repairers.
Columbia Market House Schools in Columbia are part of the Columbia Borough School District.
Town Historical Markers and Plaques provided by Columbia Borough and Rivertownes PA USA.
"Pennsylvania: Population and Housing Unit Counts" (PDF).
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Columbia, Pennsylvania.
Wikisource has the text of a 1911 Encyclop dia Britannica article about Columbia, Pennsylvania.
Borough of Columbia Municipalities and communities of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, United States
Categories:
1788 establishments in Pennsylvania - Boroughs in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania - Populated places established in 1788 - Populated places on the Susquehanna River - Populated places on the Underground Railroad
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