Columbus, NC: The Man Who Willed a County Back

The small mountain town of Columbus, county seat of Polk County, is named for a man who helped bring the county into existence.

North Carolina created Polk County in eighteen fifty-five, carved from Henderson and Rutherford counties, and a legislator named Columbus Mills was instrumental in its formation. The county was named for William Polk, a colonel in the American Revolutionary War, and today it is the fifth smallest county in North Carolina by area. The Blue Ridge Mountains cover its western third, and rolling Piedmont country covers the rest.

To thank him, the legislature named the new county seat in his honor. The town incorporated in eighteen fifty-seven. Columbus Mills went on to a long public career. The county seat he helped bring into existence still carries his first name.

The Polk County Courthouse in Columbus went up in eighteen fifty nine. It is a two story brick Greek Revival building with a three bay portico, four square pillars, and a cupola on the roof, built by Ephraim Clayton and George Shakelford. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen seventy four. Today about one thousand sixty people live in Columbus, a few miles north of the South Carolina border, and the lake just north of town, Lake Adger, was made by damming the Green River.