Columbus is located in
Lowndes County seven miles from Brooksville. Now an agricultural and trade center, Columbus was spared the Civil War destruction suffered by many other towns. Although it housed a Confederate arsenal and briefly became the state capital in 1863, it was never attacked by Union forces.
Both Confederate and Union soldiers who died in the 1862 Battle of Shiloh are buried in Friendship Cemetery at 14th Avenue and Fourth Street.
The country's first state-supported college for women, the Mississippi University for Women, was founded in Columbus in 1884.
