Columbus, Texas

Everything Columbus is known for

10 songs mention this city 3 artists from here

Music in Columbus

Songs About Columbus

Columbus, TX
The Skandalous Allstars
83%
"Columbus, TX"
Columbus Stockade Blues
Bill Monroe And His Blue Grass Boys
77%
"Columbus Stockade Blues"
Mighty Oak Tree
Hank Williams, Jr.
62%
"(nickname theme) oak trees vs the town nickname"
Beneath Oak Trees
Dylan Gossett
55%
"(nickname theme) oak trees vs the town nickname"
Live Oak
Jason Isbell
52%
"(nickname theme) oak trees vs the town nickname"
Columbus, TX
SKAndalous All-Stars
52%
"(title) "Columbus, TX" — title is the place signal"
Oak Tree
J. Killen
50%
"(nickname theme) oak trees vs the town nickname"
Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree
Johnny Carver
48%
"(nickname theme) oak trees vs the town nickname"
Tie A Yellow Ribbon 'Round The Ole Oak Tree
Tony Orlando
45%
"(nickname theme) oak trees vs the town nickname"
The Oak Tree
Morris Day
40%
"(nickname theme) oak trees vs the town nickname"

Artists From Columbus

D
Darrel Appelt
country
M
Morgan Ashley
country
W
Wyatt Aleman
country

Rivers & Roads in Song near Columbus

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Columbus.

Texas Colorado River 6 songs Interstate 10 36 songs Texas State Highway 71 2 songs US Route 90 9 songs Brazos River 42 songs U.S. Route 59 9 songs

Musical Heritage

Stafford Opera House RoadyGoat

The Stafford Opera House has stood in Columbus since 1886. In its day it sat a thousand people and booked the big touring names — Harry Houdini worked that stage. Then time did what time does, and the place fell apart: eight hundred thousand dollars' worth of structure, roof, plumbing, and flooring all gone soft. Enter Missy Parker. Late in 2023 she signed on as volunteer executive director — a forty-to-sixty-hour week, for free. She wrote a business plan, stood up six committees, and put the town to work. Six hundred thousand dollars came in the first five months. The rest followed close behind. A hundred-and-forty-year-old room, left for dead, and one volunteer who refused to let it go. The grand reopening's set for the fall.

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History of Columbus

The Battle of Columbus Almost Happened Right Here RoadyGoat

For one week in March of 1836 this river was the front line of the Texas Revolution, and everybody camped on it expected the war to end here. Sam Houston brought his army to the east bank of the Colorado at Beason's Crossing on March 19 and stayed until the 26th. Across the water, on the west side, General Joaquin Ramirez y Sesma pulled up with around eight hundred Mexican troops out of San Antonio and made camp in plain view. Two armies, one river between them, in sight of each other for a week. Houston's ranks kept swelling with men riding in to fight, up to something like fifteen hundred, which means he had Sesma outnumbered close to two to one. His officers wanted the fight. It was while he sat here that word came in about Fannin's men being killed at Goliad, which is the kind of news that makes an army want blood immediately. Houston looked at it and said no. On March 27 he broke camp and kept retreating east toward San Felipe, and a lot of his own men thought he was a coward for it. Twenty-six days later he turned around at San Jacinto and won Texas in eighteen minutes. If he had crossed here instead, Texas schoolchildren would be memorizing the Battle of Columbus. Sesma's campsite is still marked, just west of the city limits out on Highway 90.

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A Scottish Castle With a Moat, and George Washington's Kin Preaching In It RoadyGoat

In 1839 a Scotsman from Dumfries named Robert Robson looked at the south bank of the Colorado River, in a republic that was three years old and mostly log cabins, and built a castle. Not a big house that people nicknamed a castle. A castle, with a moat around it and a drawbridge over the moat. He poured it out of concrete he made from local lime and gravel, ran it up three stories, put a ballroom in it and a garden on the roof, and set a cistern up top so that piped running water came out inside the building. There were people within a day's ride of this thing who had never seen glass in a window. Robson threw parties in that ballroom. And here is the detail that tips the whole scene over: Sunday services in the castle were led by Dr. Lawrence Washington, an Episcopal minister who happened to be a grand-nephew of President George Washington. Picture it honestly. A Scottish drawbridge, a Texas river bottom, and a Washington reading the Book of Common Prayer over a room of frontier cotton farmers. The river took it back. A flood in 1869 undermined the foundations, the ruin stood another fourteen years, and in 1883 it came down. They built a beef packing plant on the spot.

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No Electricity, a One-Teacher School, and Then He Rewired Engineering RoadyGoat

James Truchard grew up on a farm outside Columbus in a house with no electricity and no indoor plumbing. He did his first schooling at Mentz, up the road, in a school with one teacher in it. He graduated from Columbus High School in 1960 as valedictorian, went to the University of Texas, and came out the other side with a bachelor's and a master's in physics and a doctorate in electrical engineering. In 1976, working out of his garage with two colleagues named Jeff Kodosky and Bill Nowlin, he started a company. Their first paying work was building interface boards so Navy researchers could get data off their instruments and into a computer. That turned out to be the whole idea. Before this, if you wanted to measure something you bought a machine built to measure that one thing, with its own dials and its own needle. Truchard and Kodosky's bet was that you could replace the machine with software, and in 1986 they shipped LabVIEW, where an engineer wires up an instrument by drawing it on a screen instead of writing code. It is now in laboratories, factories and classrooms everywhere, and it is part of how the Large Hadron Collider gets read. In 2019 both men went into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. From a one-teacher school at Mentz to that, in one lifetime.

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William Menefee

1812

William L. Menefee, born ca. 1796 in Knox County, Tennessee, served in the Tennessee Militia in the War of 1812. He studied law and was admitted to the bar sometime prior to when he moved to Alabama. In 1830 he and his wife Agnes (Sutherland) and their seven children moved to Jackson County, Texas. Menefee became involved in Texas' affairs with Mexico and represented Lavaca County as a delegate to the conventions of 1832 and 1833. In 1835 he represented Austin municipality at the consultation at San Felipe and later served as a member of the general council of the provisional government of Texas. Menefee was elected Colorado municipality's first chief justice in 1836. On March 2, 1836, he was among the signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence. In late 1836 Menefee was appointed Colorado County's first county judge by Republic of Texas President Sam Houston. Elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1837, he was one of five congressmen chosen to select the site for the Texas Capitol. An unsuccessful candidate for the Republic of Texas vice-presidency in 1841, he later served as Fayette County's state representative from 1853 to 1857. He died on October 29, 1875, and is buried in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin.

Historical Marker →

Columbus Oak

1837

Beneath this tree the first Court of the Third Judicial District of The Republic of Texas was held April, 1837 by Judge Robert M. Williamson ("Three Legged Willie").

Historical Marker →

Colorado County, City of Columbus

1823

Site of projected capitol of Stephen F. Austin's colony, 1823. First settlement at this point shown on Stephen F. Austin's map of 1835 as Montezuma. The municipality of Colorado was created by the provisional government of Texas January 11, 1836 and the town of Columbus ordered laid out as the seat of government. On March 17, 1836 the county of Colorado was created; in 1837, it was organized. Columbus, the county seat, was incorporated June 5, 1837. As railroad terminal, from 1869 to 1873, Columbus was an important trading center for a large territory to the west. In memory of: The pioneer families of Burnam, Gilleland, Cummins, Fisher DeWees, Kuykendall and Tumlinson. J. W. E. Wallace and his company who defended Gonzales October 2, 1835. William D. Lacey, Will Menefee signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Leander Beason, John P. Borden, David Cole, Stephen T. Foley, George W. Gardner, S. Joseph Garwood, Basil G. Ijams, Dr. James D. Jennings, Alfred Kelso, Amos D. Kenyon, Daniel Miller, James Nelson, Mitchell Putnam, Dempsey Pace, William Pace, Washington H. Secrest, Maxwell Steel, Robert Stevenson, Spencer B. Townsend, William Waters, Leroy Wilkinson; San Jacinto veterans who lived in this county prior to or after the Texas Revolution. Col. John C. Upton, Major John S. Shropshire, Major J. S. West, Capt. P. J. Oakes, Capt. James D. Roberdeau, Capt. R. V. Cook; Confederate officers. The following citizens of distinction have resided in Colorado County: Jones Rivers, jurist; Dr. Lawrence Washington, Gail Borden, Matthew Stanley Quay, Senator for Pennsylvania; Chas. Nagel, cabinet minister under Taft; Wells Thompson, Lieutenant Governor of Texas; George McCormick, State Attorney General and co-writer of the present State Constitution; Geo. W. Smith, member of Supreme Court of Texas.

Historical Marker →

Colorado County Feud

1898

The Colorado County Feud, a series of gun battles between members of the Townsend family of Columbus, started during the 1898 Colorado County sheriff's race. The election pitted incumbent sheriff Sam Reese against his one time deputy, Larkin Hope. Former state senator Mark Townsend, who directed a political machine that had backed the winning candidate in each of the last nine sheriff's elections, dropped his backing of Reese and endorsed Hope. The move seemingly assured Hope of victory. But on August 3, 1898, Hope was killed by an unknown assailant in downtown Columbus. Immediately, suspicion centered on Jim Coleman, a close friend of Sam Reese's sons, Walter and Herbert. Townsend picked a new candidate, Will Burford, and, with feeling running high against the Reeses, Burford won the election. Less than a year later, on March 16, 1899, Sam Reese was killed in a gun battle on the street near where Hope died. Will Clements, Marion Hope, and Mark Townsend were among those shooting. Stray bullets killed Charles Boehme, a bystander, and wounded a boy named Johnny Williams. Even though the best evidence suggests that Reese had provoked the fight in which he was killed, his sons vowed to get revenge. In five more gunfights-on May 17, 1899, January 15, 1900, July 31, 1900, June 30, 1906, and May 17, 1907-five more men were killed and several others wounded. The dead included Reese's brother Dick, Burford's son Arthur, Will Clements's brother Hiram, and Jim Coleman. Also dead was another innocent bystander, Dick Gant. No one was ever convicted of any of the murders. Those accused included Mark Townsend, Jim Townsend, Step Yates, Will Clements, Walter Reese, Joe Lessing, Frank Burford, and Marion Hope. The Townsends, Reeses, Burfords, Clementses, Hopes, and Lessings were all related to each other, either directly or through marriage. The feud had a direct effect on the economic wellbeing of Columbus. Boehme, a farmer, had been in town buying supplies when shooting erupted and he was killed. His death persuaded many area farmers to buy their supplies elsewhere. The peaceful citizens of Columbus, trying to end the feuding, asked the city council to reestablish the office of city marshal, which had been abolished some years earlier. For financial reasons, they refused. On August 7, 1906, the citizenry voted to abolish the corporation of the city of Columbus and turn the administration of the town over to the county. The town remained unincorporated for twenty years. Many of the other participants in the feud died violent, early deaths. Marion Hope was killed in an accident in Gonzales County in 1911. That same year, Will Clements was shot from ambush in Matagorda County by a man with whom he had had an altercation a few days earlier. Jim Townsend was also killed in 1911, in a gun battle with a saloon keeper in Louise. Herbert Reese was killed in 1912, when a gun he was cleaning in his Columbus home accidentally discharged. Walter Reese died as the result of injuries received in an automobile accident in El Paso in 1919.

Tsha Handbook →

Glenn, George

1870

George Glenn, black traildriver, son of Wash Glenn, was born into slavery on March 8, 1850, probably in Colorado County, Texas. He was raised on the ranch of Robert B. Johnson of Columbus and trained in ranching activities and as a trail cook. After the Civil War and emancipation, Glenn evidently continued at the Johnson ranch as a cowhand. In the spring of 1870 he accompanied Johnson on a cattle drive to Abilene, Kansas. At the Red River, when a fresh group of cowhands displaced the original ones, Johnson and Glenn continued with the new group to Abilene, where they sold the herd. Johnson fell ill and died at age thirty-six in Abilene in July 1870. Glenn had his employer embalmed and buried in a metal casket in the area. The following September he decided to bring Johnson's body back to Texas for burial and had the casket disinterred and placed in a wagon. Reportedly, Glenn traveled alone with Johnson's body for forty-two days across three states, to arrive in Columbus in November 1871. He did not continue as a cowhand but maintained a lifelong friendship with his former employer's nephew, Texas Ranger and cattleman John Edwards Folts. Glenn's death certificate lists his occupation as "laborer." He was honored as one of the handful of black members of the Old Trail Drivers Association at the 1924 and 1926 annual meetings. He married Lucy Conner on December 25, 1872, and they had at least one child. Apparently Glenn resided the rest of his life in Glidden, where he owned a homestead. He died there of pneumonia on November 28, 1931, and was buried in Columbus.

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Williamson, Robert McAlpin [Three Legged Willie]

1837

Robert McAlpin Williamson, son of Peter B. and Ann (McAlpin) Williamson, was born in Georgia in 1804 or 1806. When he was fifteen years old, his school career was terminated by an illness which confined him to his home for two years and left him disabled for life. His right leg was drawn back at the knee; the wooden leg which he wore from the knee to the ground resulted in his widely-known title of "Three Legged Willie." Williamson read much during his illness, was admitted to the bar around the age of nineteen, and may have practiced law in Georgia for over a year. In the late 1820s he migrated to Texas and settled at San Felipe de Austin. In 1829, in association with Godwin B. Cotten , he established a newspaper called the Cotton Plant , which he edited from 1829 to 1831. For a short time Williamson edited the Texas Gazette and the Mexican Citizen . He made an early appeal for the Texas colonists to resist Mexican tyranny. He was sent as a delegate from Mina (Bastrop) to the Consultation , and the provisional government established there commissioned him major on November 29, 1835, and ordered him to organize a corps of rangers. He participated in the battle of San Jacinto in William H. Smith's cavalry company, his name appearing on the original muster roll, through error, as W. W. Williamson. He received 640 acres for participating in the battle of San Jacinto. On December 16, 1836, the First Congress of the republic elected Williamson judge of the Third Judicial District, automatically making him a member of the Supreme Court. The town of Columbus had been burned during the Runaway Scrape , and as there was no suitable structure to hold court proceedings, the first term of District Court, Republic of Texas , was convened by the Honorable R. M. Williamson, under a large oak tree next to the lot where the Colorado County Courthouse was later built in April 1837. In 1840 he was elected to represent Washington County in Congress. He served in the House in the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Congress, in the Senate in the Eighth Congress, and in the House again in the Ninth Congress. His Senate seat in the Eighth Congress was contested, and he eventually lost the seat. After annexation, which he had advocated so strongly that he even named one of his sons Annexus, he served in the Senate of the first two legislatures, retiring in March 1850. As judge and lawmaker Williamson became the subject of numerous legends inspired by his personal characteristics, his unique decisions, his adroitness as a campaigner, his amusing legislative manipulations, and the succinctness of his oratory. Williamson married Mary Jane Edwards, daughter of Gustavus E. Edwards of Austin County, on April 21, 1837. They were parents of seven children. After his defeat in the race for Congress in 1850, he retired to his farm near Independence and devoted himself to the education of his children and preparations of materials for writing a history of events in Texas leading up to the Texas Revolution . He was an unsuccessful candidate for lieutenant governor in 1851. In 1857 an attack of illness affected his mental brilliance, which was further impaired by the death of his wife in 1858. From these combined shocks his mind never entirely recovered. He died at the home of his father-in-law in Wharton on December 22, 1859. Williamson County, established in 1848, was named for R. M. Williamson. In 1930, when his body was reinterred in the State Cemetery , the state of Texas erected a monument at his grave. The Texas Centennial Commission, in 1936, marked the site where he died.

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Things to Do in Columbus

quirky 24.2 mi away
The Chicken Ranch

A brothel outside La Grange operated continuously from the 1840s until Houston television reporter Marvin Zindler exposed it in 1973 -- one of the…
food 13.5 mi away
Hruska's Bakery & Store

Family-run Czech bakery on Highway 71 in Ellinger since 1912. Kolaches, klobasniky, and a roadside-store side hustle for travelers between Houston and Austin.

Sports in Columbus

🏈 High School Football

ROADYGOAT SPORTS

Tap a team for its schedule, results, history and notable alumni.

Columbus Cardinals →
🏆 STATE CHAMPIONS Class 3A · Football · 2024

Columbus Cardinals — 2024 UIL 3A Division 1 Football State Champions

Most recent: 48-14 over Malakoff · 2024 3A Division 1 final

Columbus High School, a Class 3A presence in Texas football, consistently brings spirited competition to the field. Located in the heart of Texas, the Cardinals have established a reputation for dedicated play and community involvement, reflecting the pride of their hometown.

The school's athletic program is a significant part of local life, drawing support from across the area. The commitment seen on the football field is a source of local enthusiasm, year after year.

State titles
2024
Most recent
2024, 48-14
Class
3A
The moment

The 2024 3A Division 1 State Championship saw Columbus High School defeat Malakoff with a score of 48-14.

Sources: Wikipedia · UIL State Championship Archives · SI High School (ScoreBook Live)

Everything Near Columbus

469 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the nearest 200 are listed here — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

Explore Columbus on the Map
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