A "Trading Town" Established

The first step towards the establishment of a town on the site on which the city of Columbus now stands, was taken by the Georgia Legislature of 1827. The act of that year was not one of incorporation. It was entitled "An act to lay out a trading town and to dispose of all the lands reserved for the use of the State near the Coweta Falls, on the Chattahoochee River and to name the same." This act was "assented to" Dec. 24, (one advertisement says Dec. 22,) 1827. It provided for the appointment by the Governor of five Commissioners to select the most eligible site on the reserve (known as the Coweta Reserve, near Coweta Falls on the Chattahoochee,) to appropriate a square or oblong square of twelve hundred acres for the commons and town, which was to be called and known by the name of Columbus. They were to lay out not less than five hundred building lots of half an acre each, and to make a reservation of one square containing ten acres for the public buildings of the county of Muscogee, with the privilege to the county of selling was not needed for this purpose.

The Commissioners appointed to execute the trust were Ignatius Few, Elias Beall, Philip H. Alston, James Hallam and E. L. DeGraffenried.

The present site of Columbus was at that time an almost unbroken lowland forest, in some places hardly penetrable through its thick undergrowth, and in others covered by swamps and ponds of water. Where some of the finest buildings now stand there were marshes or ponds. From one block north of where the "Perry House" now stands, all south and east was a muddy swamp, filled with briars and vines and small undergrowth among the large forest trees, so that in many places it was difficult to get through. Upon the present location of the "Perry House," and extending two blocks north, was a pond where wild ducks and geese were often shot. Fish of large size were for some time afterwards caught out of ponds of which no traces now remain. Between Oglethorpe Street and the river the land was generally high and dry, interspersed with pretty groves of fine shade trees. But east of Oglethorpe Street and all south was mostly wet swamp land.

The few houses that had been erected prior to the first sale of lots by the Commissioners were along a road that crossed the river at a ferry near where the Hospital now is. It was a section of the old "Federal Road." Traces of this river crossing may still be seen on the Alabama bank. The hotel was there and three or four stores, whose principal trade was with the Indians. But when the town was laid off and the lots sold, these settlements, being out of town, eventually had to move up within the space laid out into lots. There were but few comfortable houses up to that time some small log houses, some board houses or tents, and some Indian houses.

At that time there were a number of springs of excellent water running out of the bluff along the river. There were as many as ten or twelve of them from the "City Mills" location down to the wharf, and they afforded plenty of the best water. Gov. Forsyth, who attended the sale of the lots in 1828, preferred to camp out in a beautiful grove just below the present wharf, and pitched his, tent beside one of these springs. With the march of civilization receded the beauties as well as the wildness of Nature, and these fine springs have long since ceased their refreshing flow.

The scenery on the bank of the river was very beautiful, including some of the finest natural groves. The river, too, presented quite a different appearance from the muddy Chattahoochee of this time, with its high water-bed extended by caving to twice its original extent, its banks on both sides precipitous and bare, and those on the Alabama side still fall ing in with every freshet. The waters were clear and rippling, and the rocks that presented themselves for some distance above the steamboat landing or head of navigation nearly extended across the river in places, with channels or pools between, from which nearly all the varieties of fresh* water fish were taken in abundance. It was interesting and amusing to see the Indians catching shad in the spring of the year. They used dip-nets, made of wahoo bark split up in small strips. The net was fastened to the ends of two large canes, about fifteen feet long. They would arrange themselves in a row, five to fifteen in number, on the edge of the place where they wished to dip. They would then dip their nets in regular order, one net following right after the other. When one caught a fish he would throw it out of his net behind him, and never lose more than one dip. The whole party would yell every time there was a fish caught. But the shad, like the springs, have long since disappeared from our river, and some can hardly believe that they were ever caught here. The clear, fresh water of the Chattahoochee must then have been much more congenial and inviting to these dainty fish than the turbid stream of the present time, muddied by its passage through hundreds of thousands of acres of cultivated ground and polluted by the sewerage filth of the towns and factories on its banks.

An old writer describes the natural beauties of the locality at that time as follows:

"The most fertile imagination could not conceive a place more enchanting than this is in reality. Neither is it deficient in the various natural capacities for the convenient transaction of business.

Standing at the centre, the eye can feast the mind with contemplating the most delightful scenery, which raises a thousand romantic and poetic associations. The river on each side is adorned with forest, as beautiful as nature could make it; and the channel is made rugged and firm by the deposit* of immense heaps of solid rock. The rapids continue for a great distance, sometimes forcing the river down into a narrow channel of great depth and inconceivable swiftness. In the course of the descent of the river through some of these places, the torrent is opposed by rocks of immovable fixture, which throw it up into mountain waves, or dash it away in a wide expanse of beautiful white caps, counter currents, and eddies."

Natural Advantages

It was apparent that these were great, and though the results that might reasonably have been contemplated have not yet been fully attained, the causes of the failure or delay are also evident, and there is good reason to hope that all the anticipations of the past will yet be fully realized, if not by the agencies originally had in view, by others now progressively at work. The location being at the permanent head of navigation of a fine beatable stream, on the outskirts of continuous white settlement, with a strip of Indian territory sixty miles in width separating it from white civilization and commerce in Alabama, and this Indian country one of known fertility and beauty, whose opening to white settlement was only a question of time, there was good reason to anticipate for Columbus a rapid growth and far-reaching trade. For some time its trade by wagon and by the river was extensive, reaching from Apalachicola to the section of country now including Heard, Carroll and Fulton counties, and embracing nearly all the region between the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers. But railroads came from the east westward, and their general effect has been to carry trade to the east. The river trade has been nearly broken up, and railroads connecting with more eastern cities now traverse nearly all the country from which Columbus formerly derived her distant wagon trade. We may confidently hope for a considerable extension of trade from railroads now in course of construction, which will give us more direct communication with the great West; but unquestionably the safest reliance of Columbus for a steady advance in business and a permanent prosperity are her great advantages for manufacturing. Her princely cotton mills, already finding all over the Union a ready sale for their superior fabrics, are her "jewels," of which she may well be as proud as the Roman matron of her sons; and when we consider that not one-twentieth part of her great water power is yet appropriated, that she is in the very heart of the cotton growing region, with superior facilities both for obtaining the raw material and shipping the fabrics, and that the profits of the factories now in operation are sufficient to satisfy the cupidity of the most exacting capitalist, we cannot fail to see that this is the citadel of our strength, the firm foundation of a progress and prosperity that will yet realize all the expectations ever indulged concerning Columbus. It is not probable that the utilization of this great water power was one of the objects contemplated in the selection of the site of Columbus, and good fortune rather than human sagacity favored the city in this respect.

* Either this word does not exactly express the writer's meaning, or the river must then have moved rocks in its course as it moves sand now.