Columbia County

I leave for my annual sojourn to Lancaster two weeks from tomorrow, and for some reason it just doesn't seem like my to-do list gets any smaller. (Maybe it's because I keep thinking of things to add to it...) I'm both excited and nervous, since my presentation on "The Red Rose City: A History of Lancaster" will be the first time I'm doing an actual public engagement as the face of this blog. Adding to both the excitement and the nervousness, they have me scheduled to give my presentation in one of the two biggest rooms in the whole convention. Either they expect a lot of people to be interested in the subject or they ran out of broom closets. I kid, of course, and I'm honored to be regarded as one of this year's featured panelists.

But first, a blog post. Once the weather gets more palatable, unlike the wind that's howling outside my window right now, I'll be heading back up to Columbia County to collect some more markers and pay a visit to the kindly folks at the Columbia-Montour Visitors Center. In the meantime, let's take a look at the history of the county itself.

The marker is at the county courthouse,
35 West Main Street, Bloomsburg

Columbia County was originally part of Northumberland County, as I mentioned back in my post about the Montgomery House in Danville. Northumberland County, however, was enormous, being comprised of parts of Bedford, Cumberland, Lancaster, and Northampton Counties. If you look at the map of Pennsylvania linked up at the top of this blog, you can see just how far apart those counties are today, which will give you an idea of how big Northumberland County was when it was established in 1772. In fact, the land which was Northumberland County at that time is now occupied by more than twenty of today's counties. Over the next fifty years, five of those counties were broken from Northumberland, to better serve the growing population. 

On March 22, 1813, Columbia County was born. According to the county's own website, the name was popularized in part by the song "Hail Columbia," which had been performed in Philadelphia some years earlier by a popular young actor named Gilbert Fox. The lyrics of the song led many to regard it as a sort of unofficial national anthem ("The Star-Spangled Banner" hadn't been written yet, and didn't become the national anthem until 1931), and when they needed a name for the new county, it was a well-regarded choice. 

At the time of the county's inception, Danville was the county seat. Later, when Montour County was split off from Columbia in 1850, it became the seat of that county; we'll talk more about that when I cover that marker. In 1870, the municipality of Bloom Township was formally incorporated as the town of Bloomsburg, and since that time has held the distinction of being the only one. I mean that literally; the community slogan is that they are "The only incorporated town in Pennsylvania." Other communities may be cities, boroughs, or townships, but only Bloomsburg is actually recognized as being a town. It was named the seat of Columbia County, and is home to the beautiful county courthouse, pictured at left. The courthouse in Bloomsburg has been the same building since 1848, in the sense that the original structure was never demolished; however, it received major additions in 1868 and 1890. So what people see today when they look at the building is considered to be effectively the second courthouse because of how much it has changed over time.

Among other things, Bloomsburg is home to the Bloomsburg Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. It's identified as such because of its numerous historic buildings, including the courthouse, the Alvina Krause Theater, the Crescent Building, the Columbia Trust Building, and the town hall (pictured at right). This district is one of a whopping 31 properties and districts on the National Register which are located in Columbia County, which is impressive considering that the county measures just a little under 500 square miles in size. Also included on the Register are the Catawissa Friends Meetinghouse, which has a marker of its own and will be the subject of a future blog post, and several covered bridges. 

Speaking of those, Columbia County has 23 covered bridges, the third largest concentration in the commonwealth. This includes the "Twin Bridges" mentioned on the historical marker. These are individually known as East Paden and West Paden; they were originally built in 1884 and named for John Paden, a local sawmill operator. They provided passage over Huntington Creek in Fishing Creek Township, but rather than one long bridge or two bridges side by side, they are two distinct bridges which meet at a sort of platform in the middle. They were rendered obsolete by the installation of state route 1020 in 1963, so to continue to allow people to enjoy "the twins," Twin Bridges County Park was created around the historic structures. The original West Paden was destroyed in June 2006 by flood waters, but was replaced with a replica in 2008.

Columbia County takes quite a bit of pride in its historic roots, going back to the native Susquehannocks and all the way through the formation of the United States and to today. It's home to a number of colonial forts, including Fort McClure, Fort Jenkins, and Fort Wheeler. Important industries in the county over the years have included iron mining and smithing, wagon and carriage manufacture, and textile work including silk and leather. Henry Carver established the Bloomsburg Literary Institute in 1866, believing that higher education should be available to anyone who wants to put in the work; it became a State Normal School (where teachers were trained) in 1869 and is today known as Bloomsburg University.

The county is famous for one other particular site. The southern tip of Columbia County is part of the coal country shared by Schuylkill and Carbon Counties, and is home to the fabled Centralia, which has a fire underground. The coal mines beneath Centralia have been burning continuously since 1962, with puffs of smoke often visible just above the ground. Most of the roughly 1,200 residents accepted government assistance to abandon the borough; a tiny handful remain. Centralia is said to be the inspiration for the setting of the popular Silent Hill video game franchise, and this fact and the famous "Graffiti Highway" drew many curiosity seekers to the area over time, who often added their marks to the collective of scrawls in the former public square. However, in 2020, government officials were so concerned about potential hazards to visitors that Graffiti Highway was buried under mounds of sod in order to foster the growth of new forest. It's predicted that within the next ten-odd years, Centralia will be completely reclaimed by nature.

I wouldn't recommend a trip to Centralia. There's too much chance of the ground giving way beneath your feet. But Columbia County has many other beauties and historical treasures which are well worth undertaking a quest.

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Sources and Further Reading:

Official website of Columbia County

Official website of the Columbia County Historical and Genealogical Society

Official website of the Columbia-Montour Visitors Bureau

Knutson, Julie. "The End of Centralia's Abandoned, Colorful, Anarchic 'Graffiti Highway'." Atlas Obscura, September 14, 2020.

Battle, J. H., and others. History of Columbia and Montour counties, Pennsylvania, containing a history of each county. Chicago A. Warner & co., 1887. Digitized by the Library of Congress.

Columbia County at the Historical Marker Database

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Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.