Columbia

Two of the campus sights the plaque lists came out of loss. Thomas Jefferson's original grave marker, reading in part "Author of the Declaration of American Independence" and "Father of the University of Virginia," was presented to the University of Missouri by his heirs on July 4, 1883, a gift tied to the university's place in the Louisiana Purchase. The columns are all that remained of Academic Hall after it burned on January 9, 1892. In August 1893 the curators voted to pull them down as unsafe and ugly, then reversed themselves that December when the foundations proved sound.

What the plaque says

Columbia Columbia, "Educational Center of Missouri," originated in the town of Smithton, laid out by the Smithton Land Company, 1819. By 1821, when the name was changed the town was the seat of Boone Co., organized, 1820, and named for Daniel Boone who died that year in St. Charles Co., Missouri. Here between St. Louis and Kansas City, in the famed old Boon's Lick Country are the University of Missouri, chartered, 1839, first state university west of Mississippi; Christian College, first school of college rank for women chartered in Missouri, 1851, and Stephens College, chartered 1857, which traces its beginnings to Columbia Female Academy, 1833. The offices and outstanding Missouriana library and historical art collections of the State Historical Society of Missouri are in Columbia. Founded in 1898, the Society has now the largest state historical society membership in the U.S. Here also are the offices of the Missouri Press, Missouri State Teachers, and Missouri Farmers' associations; and here are the Ellis Fischel State Cancer, Boone Co., and University hospitals. (See other side) Erected by State Historical Society of Missouri and State Highway Commission, 1953 Columbia (Continued from other side) Columbia, settled mainly by Kentuckians and Virginians, in a beautiful scenic region, was early an educational center with several academies and a college by 1833. When the Geyer Act created a state university, 1839, Columbia and Boone Co. won the location with a subscription of $117,900. They again gave materially when the University became a land-grant college, first west of Mississippi, 1870. Expansion of the University stems from this date. Prior to this it suffered from Civil War unrest and occupation of this pro-Southern town by Union troops whose headquarters were at the University. Among prominent University divisions is the 1908 School of Journalism, first of its kind in the world. Memorials on the campuses of Stephens and Christian colleges and the University honor the leaders and benefactors of the schools. Among sites of interest on the University campus are the columns of its first building; Thomas Jefferson gravestone; Memorial Tower; and Sanborn (Agr. Exper.) Field. In town are the old courthouse columns and a Boon's Lick Trail marker. Erected by State Historical Society of Missouri and State Highway Commission, 1953

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rock Bridge Memorial State Park — 4.8 mi
  Karst on the edge of Columbia: a boardwalk through a natural rock tunnel to the Devil's Icebox sinkholes, over a cave that is the only known home of the pink planarian.
• Katy Trail State Park — 14 mi
  Two hundred forty miles of the old Missouri-Kansas-Texas rail bed between Machens and Clinton, mostly along the Missouri River, first opened in 1990 at Rocheport, where it runs through the railroad's stone tunnel.
• America's National Churchill Museum — 20 mi
  The Westminster College campus where Churchill gave the Iron Curtain speech in 1946, with a bombed Wren church from London rebuilt stone by stone above his museum.
• Missouri State Capitol — 26 mi
  The 1917 capitol on the Jefferson City bluff, built after lightning burned its predecessor, with the State Museum downstairs and Thomas Hart Benton's mural of Missouri in the House Lounge.

More markers nearby

• Fulton — 20 mi
• Boonville — 22 mi
• Boonville/Franklin — 24 mi
• Fayette — 25 mi