48 Fun Facts About Columbia SC

Which two rivers meet at Columbia to form the Congaree?

The Broad and the Saluda join at Columbia's fall line to form the Congaree, which later meets the Wateree to become the Santee.

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

The General Assembly voted in March 1786 to build a new capital near the state's centre, away from Charleston; the legislature first met there in January 1790.

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

John Guignard surveyed the two-mile-square plan in 1786, five years before L'Enfant's Washington, with 400 blocks and 150-foot-wide Assembly and Senate streets.

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

Charleston counted 150,227 residents at the 2020 census against Columbia's 136,632; Columbia had been the state's largest city as recently as the 2010 census, before Charleston overtook it.

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?

Hernando de Soto's expedition crossed the Midlands in May 1540 on its way to Cofitachequi, the Mississippian chiefdom centred on the Wateree near present-day Camden.

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

The convention met at First Baptist Church on Hampton Street for one day before a smallpox outbreak sent it to Charleston, where the Ordinance of Secession was signed 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 entered Columbia on February 17, 1865, during its march north from Savannah; that night fires, fanned by high winds, destroyed much of the city centre.

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

About a third of Columbia's buildings, roughly 450 structures, burned on the night of February 17, 1865; cotton bales piled in the streets helped spread the flames.

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

The Sand Gnats played at Savannah's Grayson Stadium until 2015, then moved to Columbia's new ballpark (Spirit Communications Park, now Segra Park) and became the Fireflies in 2016.

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

The Kansas City Royals took on the Fireflies as their Low-A affiliate in 2021, replacing the New York Mets, who had been the parent club since 2016.

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

Fort Jackson handles about half of the Army's basic combat training, the largest share of any post; its roughly 52,000 acres lie inside Columbia's city limits after a 1968 annexation.

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

Camp Jackson opened in 1917 as a First World War training camp named for Andrew Jackson; it closed after the war and was reactivated as Fort Jackson in 1940.

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

South Carolina College was chartered in December 1801 at Governor John Drayton's urging to unite Lowcountry and Upcountry elites; it opened in January 1805 with nine students.

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

Cocky debuted at the 1980 Homecoming as the 'son' of Big Spur, the gangly earlier mascot he replaced; the Gamecocks' name honors Revolutionary general Thomas Sumter.

In which athletic conference do the South Carolina Gamecocks compete?

South Carolina joined the SEC in 1992 alongside Arkansas, having left the ACC in 1971 and played as an independent for two decades.

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

Columbia Municipal Stadium opened in 1934 beside the state fairgrounds, became Carolina Stadium in 1941, and was renamed Williams-Brice in 1972 after Martha Williams-Brice's bequest funded its 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?

Dawn Staley, a Philadelphia-born point guard who starred at Virginia, took over the Gamecocks in 2008 and won national titles in 2017, 2022 and 2024, the last with a 38-0 record.

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

Hootie & the Blowfish grew out of Darius Rucker and Mark Bryan's cover duo, the Wolf Brothers; their 1994 debut Cracked Rear View became one of the best-selling albums in US history.

The owl-and-fish name of Columbia's most famous rock band came from what?

The name joins the nicknames of two college friends of Darius Rucker: 'Hootie', whose round glasses made him look like an owl, and 'the Blowfish', who had puffy cheeks.

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

Riverbanks draws more than a million visitors a year, more than any other gated attraction in South Carolina, with the zoo on the Columbia bank and a botanical garden across the Saluda.

In what year did Riverbanks Zoo open?

Riverbanks Zoo opened on April 25, 1974, on the Saluda River west of downtown; its botanical garden, on the West Columbia bank, followed in 1995.

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

Congaree holds the largest intact expanse of old-growth bottomland hardwood forest left in the southeastern US, with champion trees including a loblolly pine near 170 feet tall.

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

Congaree Swamp National Monument, created in 1976 after a grassroots campaign against logging, was redesignated Congaree National Park on November 10, 2003, dropping 'Swamp' from its name.

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.

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

The State House is built of blue granite quarried near Columbia; construction began in 1855 under architect John Niernsee and the building was not finished until 1903.

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

The Confederate battle flag, moved from the dome to a Confederate monument on the grounds in 2000, was permanently removed on July 10, 2015, three weeks after the Emanuel AME shooting.

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

Stephen K. Benjamin, a lawyer and former state cabinet official, won the 2010 runoff to become Columbia's first Black mayor and served three terms until 2022.

What temperature, a South Carolina record, did Columbia reach on June 29, 2012?

Columbia hit 113 °F on June 29, 2012, at the University of South Carolina station, the highest reading ever logged in the state up to then; the city markets itself as 'Famously Hot'.

In what year was the original Columbia Canal completed?

The Columbia Canal opened in 1824 to carry boats around the fall line; after railroads arrived in 1842 it was rebuilt in 1891 to power Columbia Mills, the first electrically run textile mill.

Which downtown Columbia concert hall opened in 1930?

Township Auditorium, a Georgian Revival hall by Lafaye and Lafaye on Taylor Street, seats about 3,000 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.

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

Trinity, completed in 1847 to Edward Brickell White's Gothic Revival design modelled on York Minster, survived the 1865 fire and became the diocese's cathedral in 1977.

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

Robert Mills, a Charleston-born architect best known for the Washington Monument, drew the 1823 mansion for merchant Ainsley Hall, who died before it was finished; its 1967 restoration was Historic Columbia Foundation's first project.

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

Woodrow Wilson's family lived in the Hampton Street house from 1871 to 1874 while his father taught at the Presbyterian seminary; it is the only home the Wilsons ever built.

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?

Modjeska Monteith Simkins, born in Columbia in 1899, ran the state Tuberculosis Association's Black outreach from 1931 until she was forced out in 1942 over her NAACP activism.

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

Leeza Gibbons, born in Hartsville in 1957, grew up in Irmo and studied journalism at the University of South Carolina before joining Entertainment Tonight in 1984.

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

Kristin Davis, born in Boulder, Colorado, moved to Columbia as a child when her stepfather joined the University of South Carolina faculty; she later trained at Rutgers.

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

Busted Plug Plaza, Blue Sky's 40-foot leaning fire hydrant, went up on Taylor Street in 2001, billed as the world's largest; his trompe-l'oeil mural Tunnelvision is a few blocks away.

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

The South Carolina State Museum opened in 1988 inside the 1894 Columbia Mills building on Gervais Street, a former textile mill beside the Columbia Canal.

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.

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

The Horseshoe, the university's original campus laid out from 1805, is a U-shaped green of antebellum buildings including the 1840 South Caroliniana Library.

Which Ghanaian city is among Columbia's sister cities?

Accra, Ghana's capital, is a Columbia sister city alongside Kaiserslautern in Germany, Cluj-Napoca in Romania and Plovdiv in Bulgaria.

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?

The Columbia metropolitan statistical area comprises six counties, Calhoun, Fairfield, Kershaw, Lexington, Richland and Saluda, with roughly 850,000 residents at the 2023 estimate.