The Commissioners' Oak

Columbia did not grow up by accident. It was planned, on paper, as a brand new capital, and the legend says the planning happened right around here, under an oak tree.

In the spring of seventeen eighty-six, South Carolina decided to move its seat of government inland, away from coastal Charleston. The state bought up part of Colonel Thomas Taylor's plantation near the meeting of the Broad and Saluda Rivers, and named a panel of commissioners to lay out the new town. Taylor was one of them.

Tradition holds that Taylor and his fellow commissioners, including Alexander Gillon, Henry Pendleton, Richard Winn, and Richard Hampton, gathered beneath an oak near this spot to sketch out the grid of streets. The city they drew became South Carolina's second capital, founded on March twenty-second, seventeen eighty-six.