Columbia Historic District - Columbia, PA - U.S. National Register of Historic Places on Waymarking.com

Columbia, 10.9 m. (255 alt., 11,349 pop.), on the east bank of the Susquehanna River, received its name at the time it was being considered as one of the many possible sites for the national capital. Originally known as Wright's Ferry, it had its beginning when John Wright, a Quaker 'speaker', came from Chester in 1726 to preach to the Indian Inhabitants and remained a ferryman, landowner and judge. Samuel Wright, his grandson, laid out the town. Traffic became too heavy for the ferry, and a bridge was constructed in 1812; a second span, built in 1834, was burned in 1863 to prevent Confederates from crossing the river. The present bridge, the fifth, is a mile-long, arched structure of concrete (toll: 25 cents). --- Pennsylvania: A Guide to the Keystone State, 1940; page 443

This town is not only closely linked with the Civil War but also with neighboring Wrightsville as the two are inextricably linked in history as well as physically with the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge. There is lots to see and do here. One of the more notable points of interest in the Lincoln Highway, which runs through this quiet rural town. They have their share of old churches, tree-lines residential streets and a bevy of historical markers and interpretives which recall the history of this strategically located town.

In 1724, John Wright, an English Quaker, traveled to the area (then a part of Chester County) to explore the land and proselytize to a Native American tribe, the Shawnee, who had established a settlement along a creek known as Shawnee Creek, which is still called that today. Wright built a log cabin near there on part of a tract of land first granted to George Beale by William Penn in 1699, and stayed for more than a year. The area was known as Shawanatown.

The following comes form the nomination form (cited in second website reference)

The Columbia Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. Situated on the eastern bank of the Susquehanna River amid rich farm county, Columbia occupies a gently sloping landscape where the river widens to almost a mile's breadth presenting a peaceful lake-like appearance dotted by small islands. The harmony is broken by the busy traffic of the two bridges spanning the river. The Columbia Historic District takes in approximately 950 structures spread over an area that incorporates about one third of the borough.

The basic component of the District is the three, occasionally two, bay, two story dwelling house usually built of brick although frame or weatherboard versions exist. The basic building material of Columbia is brick; brick that was manufactured locally beginning in the early part of the nineteenth century. Columbia Historic District is important because it illustrates two centuries of the town's growth and development as a key transportation and industrial center in south central Pennsylvania.