Columbus, Texas: Where Stephen Austin Drew the Line

Columbus is one of the oldest Anglo settlements in Texas, planted on the Colorado River in eighteen twenty-one as part of Stephen F. Austin's original colony. The crossing was known as Beason's Crossing after the ferry operator Benjamin Beason, who ran boats across the Colorado here.

During the Texas Revolution in eighteen thirty-six, Sam Houston's army camped beside the town for about a week as he retreated east during the Runaway Scrape, and he burned it when he left. The town was renamed Columbus in eighteen thirty-five, reportedly at the suggestion of a former resident of Columbus, Ohio. Today the Colorado County seat holds some of the finest Victorian courthouses in Texas, and its live oak-shaded town square still feels like the frontier it once was.