Origin Of The World's Favorite Soft Drink
Columbus Embodies American Entrepreneurship At Its Best, From The City’s Founding To the Latest Soda Flavor On Store Shelves
In 1828, newly founded Columbus, Georgia, was a boomtown. The Creek Indians had only recently vacated the favorable site at the head of navigation of the Chattahoochee River. Their removal was the result of a disputed treaty made between Georgia’s governor George Troup and his first cousin, the half-Scottish William McIntosh, one of the main chiefs of the Creek tribe. Despite protests from President John Quincy Adams, Troup moved ahead with surveying and dividing the land, and on July 10, 1928, 614 house lots laid out along the banks of the Chattahoochee were auctioned off to an enthusiastic crowd numbering in the thousands.
“It was really a frontier community for the first decade or so,” Callie Hecht, director of cultural outreach for the Historic Columbus Foundation, tells The Buzz. “Columbus is considered the last frontier town established in the original 13 states.” Even four months before the auction, over 900 people had gathered in the area in hopes of buying land, a detail, Hecht says, found in the account of a British Naval officer who visited the region that spring.
“The streets, at the time of his visit, were just laid out with stakes,” Callie says. “But they were exceptionally wide, with Broadway, the main residential street at 162 feet. Basil Hall, the naval officer, reported that people were living in impoverished shelters but that some entrepreneurs were selling houses mounted on wheels, so they could be moved to specific lots after the auction. Capt. Hall said that he had often seen towns without inhabitants, but never so many inhabitants without a town.”
The house at 716 Broadway is believed to be one of those prefabricated houses, and is the oldest house in downtown, the only survivor from the 1828 auction. Today, it is owned by Historic Columbus, which has filled it with items illustrating the city’s history. It provides the anchor for Heritage Corner, a cluster of historic buildings at Broadway and 7th Street.
Colonel Virgil Walker, a wealthy plantation owner, was the first owner of the lot at 716 Broadway. Records are sketchy about his residence in the house, but quite soon, the Nathaniel Peters family moved in, fleeing Indian raids near their cabin north of town.
“This was a very dangerous place back in the early days,” says local historian Billy Winn. “There was still a Creek village on the west side of the river, and there was a lot of animosity about the treaties.” Winn, a longtime newspaper man and native of Columbus, penned “Line of Splendor,” a book recounting the history of St. Luke United Methodist Church, founded in 1828, and the town it serves.
By 1836, the remnants of the Creek tribes were gone, part of the Trail of Tears forced migration to Oklahoma, and Walker sold the house and lot to Mrs. Dicey Peters. In 1849, Mrs. Peters transferred the house to her daughter Frances, who had married Will Langdon, one of the many transplants from New England who swelled the ranks of early Columbus citizens. Members of the Langdon family would occupy the house for over a hundred years. In 1966, now officially called the Walker-Peters-Langdon House (or WPL for short), the property came into the care of Historic Columbus.
“Originally, this was our foundation’s headquarters,” Callie Hecht says. “We’re currently in the 1860 Rankin House a few blocks away. We offer tours of both houses, as well as some of our historic neighborhoods.” The lower floor of Rankin House has been painstakingly restored to present an authentic look at Victorian styles from 1850-1870 by the Colonial Dames of America.
Historic Columbus also preserves several other historic houses that represent different eras of the city’s history as part of Heritage Corner. In addition to the 1828 Walker-Peters-Langdon house, these include a log cabin dating to the early 1800s, moved here from north of town, the 1840’s Woodruff farm house, and 700 Broadway, a two-story brick house dating to the 1870s. Also included are two houses associated with Dr. John S. Pemberton, the Columbus pharmacist who invented Coca-Cola.
The WPL House itself is surrounded by outbuildings brought from other locations, and an authentic kitchen garden. A slave cabin, moved here from elsewhere in downtown, tells the stories of notable black citizens, including Blind Tom, who played piano for presidents and kings, and Horace King, a freed slave who built bridges all over the region.
Early residents of the WPL House enjoyed a scenic view of the Chattahoochee River, lined with riverboat docks where paddlewheelers loaded bales of cotton headed for Apalachicola on the Gulf of Mexico. Nearby, the 200-foot-high Coweta Falls provided the power to develop textile mills and other factories that made Columbus one of the South’s largest manufacturing centers in pre-Civil War days.
Today the riverfront across from the Historic District is home to Heritage Park, commemorating the city’s industrial past with water features, a brick kiln, a tribute to the steamboat era, and statues of mill workers and a selfie-ready John Pemberton. Visitors can continue on to the Chattahoochee RiverWalk, a 22-mile paved path ideal for walking or biking, one of the first of its kind in the country. Along the way, the RiverWalk passes several Columbus attractions, including the Coca-Cola Space Science Center and the National Civil War Naval Museum, housing the wreck of a Confederate ironclad. A GeoCache tour challenges visitors to find 31 locations important in city history.
“We have a lot for visitors to see,” Callie Hecht says. “Our newest tour visits sites important to the history of soft drinks. Not only was Coca-Cola invented right here in Columbus, but so were RC Cola and Nehi.”
A visit to Columbus, located just 90 miles south of Atlanta, provides a unique opportunity to see American entrepreneurship at work, from the city’s founding next to a source of water power to the latest soft drink flavors on store shelves. This same can-do attitude has led Columbus to reinvent itself as a destination worthy of a stop for any history fanatic.
Renee Wright
A graduate of Franconia College in Social Psychology, Renee has worked as Travel Editor for Charlotte Magazine and has written three travel guidebooks for Countryman Press among other writing assignments. She enjoys food and camping.
Make Sure To Stay At:
Lake Pines RV Park, which is a family operated campground and RV park located in east Columbus, Georgia. Lake Pines features complete RV facilities and tent camping spaces. They have hiking trails, a swimming pool & a complete onsite Events Center.