Columbia, formerly Wright's Ferry, is a borough (town) in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, United States. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 10,222. It is southeast of Harrisburg, on the east (left) bank of the Susquehanna River, across from Wrightsville and York County and just south of U.S. Route 30.
The settlement was founded in 1726 by Colonial English Quakers from Chester County, led by entrepreneur and evangelist John Wright. Establishment of the eponymous Wright's Ferry, the first commercial Susquehanna crossing in the region, inflamed territorial conflict with neighboring Maryland but brought growth and prosperity to the small town, which was just a few votes shy of becoming the new United States' capital.
Though besieged for a short while by Civil War destruction, Columbia remained a lively center of transport and industry throughout the 19th century, and was once the terminus of the Pennsylvania Canal. Later, however, the Great Depression and 20th-century changes in economy and technology sent the borough into economic decline. It is notable today as the site of one of the world's few museums devoted entirely to horology.
History
Early history
The area around present-day Columbia was originally populated by Native American tribes, most notably the Susquehannocks, who migrated to the area 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.
First Western settlements In 1724, John Wright, an English Quaker, traveled to the Columbia area (then a part of Chester County) to explore the land and proselytize to a Native American tribe, the Shawnee, who had established a settlement along Shawnee Creek. Wright built a log cabin nearby on a tract of land first granted to George Beale by William Penn in 1699, and stayed for more than a year. The area was then known as "Shawanatown".
When Wright returned in 1726 with companions Robert Barber and Samuel Blunston, they began developing the area, Wright building a house about a hundred yards from the edge of the Susquehanna River in the area of today's South Second and Union streets. Susanna Wright later built Wright's Ferry Mansion, what is now the oldest existing house in Columbia, dating to 1738. She lived in this house with her brother James and his wife Rhoda, and possibly the first of their many children. The home is open for tours as a house museum and is located at Second and Cherry streets.
Robert Barber constructed a sawmill in 1727 and later built a home near the river on the Washington Boro Pike, along what is now Route 441. The home still stands, across from the Columbia wastewater treatment plant, and is the second oldest in the borough (after Wright's Ferry Mansion).
Samuel Blunston constructed a mansion called Bellmont atop the hill next to North Second Street, near Chestnut Street, at the location of the present-day Rotary Park playground. Upon his death, Blunston willed the mansion to Susanna Wright, who had become a close friend. She lived there, occasionally visiting brother James, ministering to the Native Americans, and raising silkworms for the local silk industry, until her death in 1784 at the age of 87. The residence was demolished in the late 1920s to allow for construction of the Veterans Memorial Bridge.
In 1729, after Wright had petitioned William Penn's son to create a new county, the provincial government took land from Chester County to establish Lancaster County, the fourth county in Pennsylvania. County residents – Indians and colonists alike – regularly traveled to Wright's home to file papers and claims, seek government assistance and redress of issues, and register land deeds. The area was particularly attractive to Pennsylvania Dutch settlers. During this time, the town was called "Wright's Ferry".
Wright's Ferry
In 1730, John Wright was granted a patent to operate a ferry across the Susquehanna River, subsequently established (with Barber and Blunston) as Wright's Ferry. He also built a ferry house and a two-story log tavern, north of Locust Street, on Front Street, in Philadelphia.
The ferry itself originally consisted of two dugout canoes fastened together with carriage and wagon wheels and drawn by cattle. Crossings could be a dangerous enterprise. When several oxen were moved at once, the canoeist guided a lead animal with a rope so that the others would follow; if, however, the lead animal became confused and started swimming in circles, the other animals followed until they tired and eventually drowned.
Typical fares in the 1700s were: Coach with four passengers, drawn by five horses – nine shillings; Four-horse wagon – three shillings and nine pence; Man and horse – six pence Fares were reduced in 1787 due to competition from Anderson's Ferry, located further upstream near Marietta. Wright's Ferry was located immediately south of the present-day Veterans Memorial Bridge along Route 462. In later years, Wright rented the ferry to others before finally selling it.
Traffic heading west from Lancaster, Philadelphia, and other nearby towns regularly traveled through Columbia, using the ferry to cross the Susquehanna. As traffic flow increased, the ferry grew, to the point of including canoes, rafts, flatboats, and eventually steamboats; it became capable of handling Conestoga wagons and other large vehicles. Due to the volume of traffic, however, wagons, freight, supplies and people often became backed up, creating a waiting period of several days to cross the river. With 150 to 200 vehicles lined up on the Columbia side, ferrymen used chalk to number the wagons.
Cresap's War
Wright's Ferry was the first convenient crossing of the Susquehanna River in the region. At the time, however, southern Pennsylvania above the 40th parallel was claimed by the Province of Maryland, which took especial interest in the rural area around the ferry. Fearing an influx of Pennsylvanian settlers that could weaken Maryland's influence, Maryland colonist Thomas Cresap, under the aegis of Lord Baltimore, attempted to establish a competing ferry and a strong landholding presence around the Susquehanna. Pennsylvanians responded in kind; a violent attack on Cresap in October 1730 escalated the situation into a series of bitter (if not bloody) militia skirmishes and heated legal battles. The situation was not fully resolved until a London peace agreement in 1738, which cooled the colonies' territorial dispute and set the stage for the later codification of the Mason–Dixon line.
Becoming Columbia Samuel Wright, son of James and Rhoda Wright, was born on May 12, 1754. He eventually became the town proprietor and created a public grounds company to administer the land. Through his trusteeship, the town's first water distribution system (later the Columbia Water Company) was established, as well as the Washington Institute (the town's first school of higher learning) and Locust Street Park, located at what is now Locust Street and Route 462.
In the spring of 1788, Samuel Wright had the area surveyed and formally laid out the town into 160 building lots, which were distributed by lottery at 15 shillings per ticket. "Adventurers", as purchasers were known, included speculators from many areas of the country. Wright and town citizens renamed the town "Columbia" in honor of Christopher Columbus in the hope of influencing the new United States Congress to select it as the nation's capital, a plan George Washington favored;Sheldon, 2006, p. 38. a formal proposal to do so was made in 1789. Unfortunately for the town, when Congress voted in 1790, the final tally was one vote short. Later, Columbia narrowly missed becoming the capital of Pennsylvania; Harrisburg was chosen instead, since it was closer to the state's geographic center.
19th century Expansion, construction, and transportation
English Anglicans, Scots-Irish Presbyterians, freed African slaves, German Lutherans, and descendants of French Huguenots came to outnumber the first Quaker settlers within a generation.
Columbia became an incorporated borough in 1814, formed out of Hempfield Township. The same year, the world's longest covered bridge was built across the Susquehanna to Wrightsville, facilitating traffic flow across the river and reducing the need for the ferry. The bridge was long and wide, and had 54 stone piers. After handling traffic across the Susquehanna for 18 years, it was destroyed by high water, ice, and severe weather in the winter of 1832. A replacement covered bridge, the Pennsylvania Railroad Bridge, was built within two years.
Public works In February 1826, the Pennsylvania state legislature approved 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 transportation known, water transport. The project started with the harder parts up the Juniata River and over the mountains being funded first. $300,000 in the funding was for the construction of a navigation that would be called the Pennsylvania Canal along the Susquehanna's eastern shore to bypass rapids and shallows and make the river navigable anywhere along its route. Also, as conceived, another canal would be dug from the terminus in Columbia to connect towns to the east with a terminus on the Delaware River at Philadelphia.
Across the Alleghenies, another canal would connect the Allegheny Portage Railroad (crossing the mountains) to the Ohio River and the Mississippi River. Like the Erie Canal, which was completed in 1825, the very year the legislation package came to be filed, the overall scheme was envisioned when water transport was the fastest means of travel over any long distance, was the best way to ship heavy bulk goods or cumbersome loads, and was before railways came to the public eye and their technology had been refined enough to become working propositions. In 1836 there were probably fewer than six railways in the world.
The navigations began in 1832 after several delays, and the work proceeded quickly. The Pennsylvania Canal began operating in 1833, beginning in Columbia and then stretching north to the junction of the Juniata River with the Susquehanna River. The intent was that goods and travelers could use the canal system 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 north to reach north-central Pennsylvania and Upstate New York.
The plan encountered difficulties. Engineering studies found no reasonably feasible way to provide enough water to keep an 82-mile canal to Philadelphia wet, much less support lock operations. 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 railways that were making news. Their solution was the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad, one of the first common carrier commercial railways to operate in the United States. Double-tracked, it utilized two inclined plane cable railways 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.