Things to do

Columbia is the first city in the US named for Christopher Columbus. The name Columbia won over the other popular option, Washington. 

Columbia was the very first planned city in the state, but more impressively, it was the second planned city* in the entire United States. *There is some controversy. Just a few short hours’ drive away, Savannah, Georgia was laid out in 1733 making it the first, however that was before the Revolutionary War and before the US became a nation.

Appropriately for the state capital, Columbia is actually located only 13 miles northwest of the geographic center of South Carolina.

Although located 13 miles from the geographic center of the state, the Alumni and Convention Centers and the Columbia Metropolitan Airport are only about 250 FEET above sea level. There are areas just southwest of the city that are below sea level!

You might, as that song goes, “feel the earth move under [your] feet” on Saturday night with the DJ – or it might really be the earth moving under your feet! We do get earthquakes in the Columbia area and throughout South Carolina. In fact, there were FOUR detected in August ranging from 1.72 to 2.25 in magnitude. Check out this website from the SC DNR to find the epicenters and learn more!

Make sure you say them right... Gervais (jer-VAY) Street is named after John Lewis Gervais, who helped establish Columbia as the state’s capital and named the city in 1786. Huger (U-gee) Street is named after Isaac Huger, a brigadier general in the Revolutionary War. He went on to serve in the SC Senate and House of Representatives. Both men were Huguenots, French Protestants who fled to the American colonies in the 1600s to escape Catholic oppression. 

Columbia is affectionately known as the "Soda City" by locals, but not because any soda was invented or manufactured there. Instead, the nickname comes from an old abbreviation of Columbia to "Cola.” 

The Soda City was founded in 1786, but you won't see many 18th or early-19th century buildings there. That’s because two-thirds of Columbia burned to the ground during the Civil War when Gen. William T. Sherman entered the city in 1865.

The first textile mill run completely by electricity in the world opened in Columbia in 1894. The enormous red brick building that housed the mill is now home to the South Carolina State Museum. You can still see tiny bits of the mill's spinning machinery that became embedded in the original wooden floors. 

Synchronous fireflies, or fireflies that light up all at the same time, are found in only half a dozen places in the entire world. One of them happens to be right outside Columbia, in Congaree National Park. The fireflies put on their show in late May and early June. As a link to the amazing show, the city's minor league baseball team, which started play in 2016, is named the Columbia Fireflies. Some of the team's merchandise even glows in the dark. 

The tallest trees east of the Mississippi are just 20 miles outside of town in Congaree National Park. Congaree has more than two dozen "champion trees," or trees that are the largest of their species. 

Riverbanks Zoo is one of fewer than half a dozen zoos in the US that has a permanent koala exhibit. 

Columbia is home to one of only a handful of dedicated puppet theaters in the nation. The Columbia Marionette Theater was built specifically for this unusual art form, and a show there is like no other puppet show you've seen. 

Ever wait in line at the Carousel of Progress at the Magic Kingdom in Orlando and hear the video about the GE rotating platform showing off all of the newest appliances at the 1964 New York World’s Fair?  After sitting in storage, it landed in Columbia and got a new life as the platform for a rotating restaurant called, “Top of Carolina” located on the 18th floor of the Capstone House. Since 2016, USC has been lighting the top of Capstone garnet to celebrate major academic and athletic accomplishments.

The Dreher Shoals Dam (popularly known as the Lake Murray Dam), a few miles upriver from Columbia, was the largest earthen dam in the world when it was built in 1930. Approximately 100,000 acres of land was purchased for the building of the dam and lake. Under the lake are nearly a dozen communities, thousands of graves, the Wise Ferry Bridge, bomber airplanes, pipeline, railroad tank cars, an old rock house, homes, boats, and bomb fragments.

Assembly Street in downtown Columbia is remarkably wide for a city street of anytime, but it's even more remarkable when you learn it was designed that way in the 18th century. Why so broad? Local lore says it's because the early city planners hoped that it would be too wide for mosquitoes to cross.

Astronaut Charles F. Bolden graduated from C. A. Johnson High School in Columbia in 1964. Bolden spent four missions in orbit on the space shuttle, and then in 2009 he took the position of Administrator of NASA.

Hootie and the Blowfish got their start in Columbia. Lead singer Darius Rucker met the rest of the band when they were all Gamecock freshmen at the University of South Carolina.

Georgia O’Keeffe, a well-known modern artist of the 20th century, taught art at Columbia College in 1915. While there, she produced the charcoal sketches that found their way to Alfred Stieglitz – who took up promoting her art… and the rest is history.

67. That’s how many movies have been filmed in Columbia, according to IMDB. Better-known pictures include “Death Sentence” starring Kevin Bacon and scenes filmed in Williams-Brice Stadium in “The Waterboy” and “The Program.”

The University of Carolina sports teams were named in honor of a South Carolina Revolutionary War hero. Thomas Sumter was said to fight like a gamecock. Thus, the Gamecocks were born.

The South Caroliniana Library was the first college library in the nation built as a separate building in 1840. The freestanding library was constructed at the University of South Carolina.

Fort Jackson, the 53,000-acre US Army Training Center in Columbia, is the largest and most active Entry Training Center into the US Army in the nation. It trains ~45,000 basic training Soldiers annually, making up almost 50% of the Army’s basic combat trainees and about 60% of all females entering the Army.