VIDEO: Making Sure A Town’s History Doesn’t Fade Away
COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – The history of Columbus is on display on almost every street in the downtown area.
It was one of the few Mississippi towns spared from destruction during the Civil War.
Columbus, Mississippi.
Born in 1821 and originally known as Possum Town.
It started writing its story almost 200 years ago, and parts of its early life are still around.
“There’s so many things that you can’t do anything about and one of them is create history. You cannot create historic structures,” says Visit Columbus CEO, Nancy Carpenter.
25,000 residents have planted their roots in Columbus and so have more than 600 historical properties.
“Every community has places that they are working on to save that are valuable to them and they haven’t quite figured it out yet, but I would say for Columbus, the attitude is, ‘what are we going to do to save,’ which is not always every community’s approach, so you’ve gone a long way saving the places that are meaningful to your community,” says Mississippi Heritage Trust Executive Director, Lolly Rush.
One of those meaningful places is The Rosedale Plantation, established in 1856. It’s a treasured piece of history here in the middle of town.
“We moved to this house and it was seven years, and then I guess we just liked the historical aspect of the house, and we decided to restore it to the original thing and it was a huge a process, which took four years,” says owner Gene Imes.
There’s three historic districts within the history rich town.
“The Burns Bottom, and the Downtown Main District, and then Southside Historic District, which goes from the river down to 14th, and then down to the railroad tracks, so you’re talking about a tremendous area that amasses so many historic structures, and then here on the campus of MUW there’s about 35 structures that are on the National Register.”
It’s those pieces of history that attract people from all over the world.
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