A04 Columbus, Kentucky USA 1820

Columbus is one of the oldest towns in the 1818 Jackson Purchase, a western expansion treaty that expropriated seven million acres of land from the Chickasaw people for $300,000.     In 1861, General Polk established a Confederate stronghold at the Mississippi River bluff town, calling the city the “Gibraltar of the West.” Polk aimed to block the movement of General Grant's Union troops downriver using a mile-long iron chain draped in the Mississippi water. He failed. The city now houses a park commemorating the Civil War battle. Polk’s chain and anchor remain.

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