The area had been home to the historic Muscogee-speaking Creek; Yuchi, people speaking a language isolate; and Iroquoian-speaking Cherokee for years prior to European colonization.

During the Colonial era, settlement of what would become Columbia County occurred primarily due to colonists settling at the second city in Georgia, Augusta, located on the Fall Line.

Baptist preachers and their converts continued to flourish, and in Virginia their influence helped shape the young James Madison's ideas on religious freedom, which he incorporated into the new Constitution.

Two small battles occurred in what would become the county during the Revolutionary War between Patriot Militia and Tories; the area was then primarily frontier and loyalties were badly divided.

Legend has it that a small band of Patriots sought refuge from marauding Tories at the county's most dramatic geological feature, Heggie's Rock.

One of these fights occurred on September 11, 1781, between the forces of Elijah Clarke and a band of Tories and British Regular soldiers.

George Walton, the Virginia-born statesman who signed the Declaration of Independence, resided in what would become Columbia County, as did William Few and Abraham Baldwin.

Just before and immediately after the Revolution, numerous Virginians and North Carolinians migrated to the frontier of Georgia above Augusta, including the area around Brownsborough.

In 1809, the Baptist congregation left the town and constructed a new meeting house (a building which survives) several miles away near the junction of Kiokee and Greenbrier creeks.

Columbia Institute was started by a certain gentleman going by the surname Bush; he was none other than the Bushnell of Revolutionary War submariner fame.

[citation needed] During the Georgia Gold Rush of the 1820s, some successful prospecting and mining occurred in Columbia County.

Plantation agriculture based on slave labor was the major force of the economy in the county prior to the American Civil War.

When Georgia seceded from the United States, George Walker Crawford, a native son of Columbia County, presided over the Secession Convention.

Men from the county served in several companies, among them the Hamilton Rangers and the Ramsey Guards, some in the 48th Georgia Volunteer Infantry Regiment, and some in the 22nd; almost all in Wright's Brigade.

Because of significant Ku Klux Klan violence in the late 1860s, it was attached to a special district including Warren, Wilkes, and Oglethorpe counties.

In 1870, the part of Columbia County which included Thomson, Dearing, and Wrightsboro, the 12,000 acre settlement established in 1768 by Colonial Governor James Wright as a settlement for displaced Quakers from North Carolina,[5] was combined with parts of Warren County to form McDuffie County—named after South Carolina's U.S.

Harlem arose in the 1880s when a disgruntled railroad employee named Hicks, angered by saloons and Sabbath breaking in Sawdust, moved along the tracks one mile east and set up a rival town, complete with its own depot.

Prior to World War II, the county was still primarily agricultural; it had escaped the boll weevil infestation that destroyed cotton crops in Mississippi and other parts of the South.

The US Army built Camp (later Fort) Gordon, taking over a large portion of Richmond County and parts of Columbia, McDuffie, and Jefferson.

During the 1950s, the Clarks Hill Dam was constructed, submerging considerable land in northern Columbia County under the new reservoir.

Agriculture declined, as farmland was redeveloped as suburban housing and community centers for persons employed in Augusta.

Appling retains its status as de jure county seat, but all governmental functions are carried out in Evans.

[1] Historic sites in Appling include the Courthouse and Jail, the Marshall Monument, and various places associated with Kiokee Baptist Church.

Other sites in the county include Stevens Creek Dam and Canal Locks, the birthplace of the comedian Oliver Hardy in Harlem, and various cemeteries.

The initiative drew strong opposition from officials in Harlem and Grovetown, the county's only municipalities, citing that it would keep their cities from growing.

A straw poll conducted during the county Republican Party primary election, showed strong opposition to the idea countywide.

The County Commission Chairman Ron Cross has vowed to keep the issue alive, but based on the negative sentiment from voters, it appears that at least for now, the idea of incorporation is back in hibernation.