Columbia Military Academy

Columbia Military Academy rose and fell on a national tide. When Depression enrollment sank below two hundred cadets, a new operating board led by C. A. Ragsdale and William Batts steadied it in 1931, and by 1962 it had more than five hundred. Then the 1960s brought a rise in private day schools across the South after public school desegregation, and the Vietnam War made things military unpopular. The academy added female day students in 1969, lost its ROTC enrollment in 1978, and was turned over to a Christian group that reorganized it as Columbia Academy.

What the plaque says

Columbia Military Academy 1904-1979 In 1888, local residents gave 67 acres to the U.S. Army for an arsenal. The Bowling Green stone buildings quartered troops in the Spanish–American war. Columbia Military Academy was founded in 1904 and opened formally August 23, 1905 with 167 young men from eight states. Designated an "Honor School" in 1935 by the U.S. Government, youth nationwide trained here as military and civil leaders, among them; general officers, battle heroes, governors, educators, and corporate heads.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• James K. Polk Home and Museum — 1.1 mi
  The 1816 brick house in Columbia where Polk practiced law and campaigned for the legislature, now a museum that also tells of the people the Polk family enslaved.
• The Mink Slide and East 8th Street — 1.4 mi
  Columbia's Black business and church district south of the courthouse square, where on the night of February 25, 1946 a white mob gathered and Black veterans stood guard.
• Gordon House and Ferry Site — 13 mi
  A brick house of 1818 beside the Duck River at milepost 407.7 of the Natchez Trace Parkway, where a Chickasaw partner and a Tennessee captain ran a ferry and an inn.
• Henry Horton State Park — 20 mi
  A Duck River park on Governor Henry Horton's former farm in Marshall County, with a mill ruin from 1845, kayak floats and the grave of a governor the House declined to impeach.

More markers nearby

• Hood & Schofield, November 24, 1864 — 1.0 mi
• Freedmen's Savings Bank and Trust Company — 1.3 mi
• The Reverend Edmund Kelly — 1.5 mi
• Joseph Brown — 3.2 mi