In 1726 Quaker John Wright built a log house in an area first granted to George Beale by William Penn 25 years earlier, and in 1730 he established a ferry at this natural crossing point on the Susquehanna. Originally known as Wright's Ferry, the town's formal layout occurred in 1788. Citizens renamed it Columbia in honor of Columbus, hoping the new name would influence Congress in 1790 to name it the nation's capital, but it fell one vote short. In 1814 Columbia became an incorporated Borough, formed out of Hempfield Township. Its settlers were English, Scotch, Irish, African-American, and German. The town became an important transportation hub, with roads, canals, and railroads radiating outward. Escaping slaves seeking freedom passed through on their way to more northern states, Canada, and greater safety. During the Civil War, retiring Union forces burned the mile-long covered bridge, halting advancing Confederates on the western shore at Wrightsville. By 1900 the town had grown to over 12,000 residents, and its industries produced silk goods, lace, pipe, laundry machinery, stoves, iron toys, flour, lumber, and wagons. In 1875 Columbia opened a new three-story Opera House with an auditorium seating over 900, offices, shops, council chambers, and a town clock; after fire destroyed it in 1947, the community rebuilt it and the clock, dedicating the resulting one-story building as the Borough offices. On June 28, 1863, as Confederate Brigadier General John B. Gordon and his men closed in on the one and one-quarter mile-long covered Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge, Colonel Jacob G. Frick and his 650 men, ordered by Major General Darius N. Couch to protect it, faced local militia efforts to destroy several spans; when explosions failed to stop the crossing, a fire was set that totally engulfed the bridge, stopping the Confederates but costing Frick the structure he had been ordered to defend. The inter-county Veteran's Memorial Bridge was dedicated on Armistice Day, November 11, 1930, to the memory of the sons and daughters of Lancaster and York Counties who had served in the country's wars, and at approximately one and one-half miles long it was believed on completion to be the longest multiple arch reinforced concrete highway bridge in the world.
