Several years ago, I wrote about how the Riverwalk is not only a touch of natural beauty at the edge of downtown but also a place steeped in history. I have expanded that old column further describing how history merges with the beautiful natural landscape along the walkway.

The history found along the Riverwalk goes back almost 500 years. However, the first specific mention of the location that became the Riverwalk at the foot of Main in Columbus was 203 years ago by John Pitchlynn. In the summer of 1817, Capt. Hugh Young, the surveyor of the route of Andrew Jackson’s Military Road from Nashville to New Orleans, reached the Tombigbee River. In order to best determine a crossing point, he met with Pitchlynn, who had been residing at the north end of Plymouth Bluff near the mouth of Tibbee Creek since 1810. Pitchlynn was U.S. interpreter and sub-agent for the Choctaw Nation, in which he had lived since the 1770s.

Young asked Pitchlynn about the best place in the area to cross the Tombigbee. Young wrote to Andrew Jackson on Sept. 30, 1817, giving Pitchlynn’s response: “Mr. Pitchlynn joined me at the river, and recognized the place, as one used by the Indians for rafting, when the high water prevents fording at the usual places.”

That recommendation established the location of the Tombigbee crossing of the Military Road and the future site of Columbus. Pitchlynn’s comment also provided evidence for another Tombigbee crossing more than 479 years ago.

In December 1540, the de Soto expedition arrived at the Tombigbee River somewhere between present-day Pickensville and Barton’s Ferry near Columbus Air Force Base. De Soto had an Indian guide and the Tombigbee was found to be overflowing its banks. A place was needed where rafts could be built and the river crossed. The Indian high-water trail Pitchlynn mentioned may well have been that Spanish crossing place.

On the riverbank at the end of College Street is a parking lot for the Riverwalk. From the parking lot along the walkway and under the two Tombigbee bridges was the site of Columbus’ first river landing. As early as 1818 it was a keelboat landing.

The captain of three of the early keelboats were Thomas Sampson (late 1817 or early 1818), a Caldwell of Tuscaloosa (1818) and Ovid Brown (1819 into 1820s). The Feb. 2, 1820, Mobile Gazette and Commercial Advertiser reported the “barge” (keelboat) Southern Trader under Brown had cleared the Port of Mobile headed for Columbus. In March 1823, the Cotton Plant became the first steamboat to arrive at Columbus and docked at the landing. That landing soon became a busy steamboat landing during the high-water shipping season of late fall to early spring.

By the mid-1830s, warehouses were constructed along the river running south from the steamboat landing. Even today, in the thicket along the river just south of the Riverwalk parking lot, bricks can be found that mark the remains of the Union Warehouse that was constructed in the mid-1830s. That warehouse site was described by E.R. Hopkins in an article he wrote around 1930.

Hopkins had grown up in Columbus during the mid-1800s and in the 1920s and 30s often wrote about the Columbus of earlier years. In reminiscing about First Street South he wrote: “The other reminder is located on the bank of the river a little north of South Fourth Avenue. It is the north east brick foundation of the warehouse of B.L. Long & Son. This warehouse was destroyed (by a fire) with a large lot of cotton in 1880s. The volunteer firemen took the Lurlene Fire Engine down to the river and fought the fire. The cotton sheds were located where Mr. and Mrs. A.M. Byram’s dwelling stands (107 Fourth Ave. S.). A two-room brick building on the same premises was used as a Camp House by people who hauled cotton in horse, mule, and oxen wagons from Fayette, Lamar, Pickens and other Alabama counties.”

Hopkins also recalled one of the work chants he had heard as a child at the Columbus landing. T.H. Moore, a 19th century steamboat captain, recalled the deckhands or “roustabouts” being a hard-working, “happy-go-lucky” group who would break into song while working. The chorus Hopkins remembered went:

“The William S. Holt and John T. Moore.

Goodbye, my lover, goodbye.”

The chant is easily dated as it was only between 1875 and 1879 that both the Steamboats William S. Holt and the John T. Moore were in the Columbus-Mobile trade.

The early Columbus newspapers have many advertisements and references to the river warehouses. The Nov. 12, 1836, Columbus Democrat has a reference to the warehouse of Clark & Co., and the Columbus Southern Argus in 1838 refers to warehouses of Clark & Co. and Aikin & Gibbs. Both warehouses were on the river at the steamboat landing and near each other. An ad in the Southern Argus issue described Aikin & Gibbs’ warehouse as “large, spacious and secure (being the one formerly occupied by C S Aikin).” The first mention I found of the name Union Warehouse being used was in 1848.

South of the warehouse remains and off of the top of the high river bluff at Fourth Avenue South, African-American engineer Horace King constructed a wooden covered bridge across the river in 1842. The recently restored old 1928 drawbridge crosses about where the upper limit of the boat landing would have been. It was about there the ill-fated Eliza Battle left for Mobile only to become a ghostly legend in 1858 and where one of the last Upper Tombigbee steamboats, the City of Columbus, burned in 1911. The new Tombigbee bridge was built on the site of the 1877 iron bridge, which is also the site of the old Military Road ferry crossing from 1817 and a Civil War pontoon bridge.

About 1848, two cannons, marked with Spanish crest, were found in the river near the boat landing; their origin was never determined, and they were lost during the Civil War. During the Civil War the Confederate army constructed a pontoon bridge at the foot of Main Street with a small fort to protect it. Across under the west bank of the river, the wrecked hull of the Fanny W. may rest.

She was a steamboat owned by African-American businessmen in Columbus. Her boilers exploded in 1878. Though almost to Waverly, the remains of her hull floated downstream and lodged against the riverbank across from Columbus. The late Uncle Bunky recalled that when he was growing up a flood exposed the wreck of a riverboat across from the mouth of Moore;s Creek. High water soon covered it up again.

There is a walkway bridge crossing Moore’s Creek. This creek was first known as Tan Yard Creek. By May 1822, there was a tan yard about where the soccer complex is now located. A branch of the walkway crosses under the Highway 82 connection with downtown here and leads to the soccer complex. Not far down the walkway and across the road to Ruben’s Catfish and Steakhouse is the Butterfly Garden. It is maintained by Lowndes County Master Gardeners. Spring through fall it is ablaze with color and filled with butterflies and hummingbirds. It is worth the walk just to enjoy the peaceful beauty it offers. Southwest of the butterfly garden was a Confederate military camp during the Civil War and a Mississippi National Guard encampment during the Spanish-American War.

Walking through the woods and slues along the walkway, one can ponder the journeys once taken by people seeking their freedom. The Underground Railroad, a branch of which was said to have come up the banks of the Tombigbee, was a route for escaping enslaved people to travel with the spiritual “Follow the Drinking Gourd” as a verbal road map. It is a song whose origin and veracity are uncertain, but whose story illustrates a deeper truth.

Today the Adventure Cycling Association promotes a 2,100-mile bicycle trail from Mobile, to Ontario, Canada, following the route of the Underground Railroad as described in “Follow the Drinking Gourd. Among the not-to-miss historic highlights listed along the trail are three Lowndes County sites ­– the Missionary Union Baptist Church, Concord Christian Methodist Episcopal Church and the Billups-Garth Archives of the Columbus-Lowndes Library.

An 1863 Confederate map shows entrenchments and fortifications encircling Columbus and extending across present day Highway 82 and the walkway to the river. After passing the half mile marker on the walkway you begin to see old bar pits and ditches. You cannot help but wonder which one of them might actually be part of the old Civil War fortifications.

There was an 1830s road running from Columbus generally along the present-day route of the walkway to the West Port Ferry. West Port was a cotton shipping community across the river on what is now the Island. The settlement was devastated by a flood in 1847. In 1980 the new channel for the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway cut through the middle of the old town.

Not far north of the end of the Riverwalk Oak Slush Creek flows into the River on the west side. It was south along this creek that in 1829 one of the first if not the first professional ball team in America was organized. It was two Choctaw stickball teams assembled and paid by Gideon Lincecum to tour the east playing exhibition stickball games.

A walk down the Columbus Riverwalk is truly traveling a pathway through history and a delightful way to get out and enjoy the natural beauty of the landscapes along the Tombigbee River. Thanks to Carolyn Kaye and Gary Lancaster for helping with this column.

Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].