Richland County, a 762-square-mile expanse of lowland, sand hills, and rolling countryside, is, in essence, the Palmetto State in miniature. The county's varied terrain has from time to time produced all of the major crops associated with South Carolina throughout its long history. These crops include indigo, tobacco, wheat, rice, and cotton. For two centuries the region has been the stage for events and decisions that have shaped the lives of all South Carolinians.
Created in 1785 in response to inland demands for local government, Richland was named either for good soil found along its Congaree River or for a plantation owned by Thomas Taylor, who might well be considered the father of this county. The following year, in an effort to find a more central meeting site, South Carolina's lawmakers decided to set up shop on the banks of the Congaree, a highly innovative move.
The town thus created (Columbia) is the first instance in modern history of a functioning bureaucracy packing up and transferring its operations to a wilderness setting. Although Richland's original courthouse was built at Horrell Hill, a dozen miles east of present- day Columbia, by 1800 the little town of Columbia had become the center of county affairs, largely at the insistence of lawyers eager to do business at the new state capital.
Although village life outside of Columbia was rare during the first half of the 19th century, that community, thanks to the birth of the South Carolina College (1801), otherwise known as USC, and the beginnings of a rail network (1842) served well as the focus of social and commercial activity. By the eve of the Civil War, Columbia (population 8,000) was the largest inland community in the Carolinas, making Richland County a regional crossroads of considerable importance.
In decades that followed, despite hard times the county experienced modest growth as the population rose from 23,000 in 1870 to 78,000 a half-century later. However, the turbulent 1930's ushered in an era of rapid change as an agricultural community was transformed into a patchwork of suburbs, shopping centers, and industrial/commercial facilities designed to serve both a burgeoning metropolis and a growing state bureaucracy. By 1980, Richland County was home to 270,000 people and where there had been 3,200 farms fifty years earlier, there were now only 382. Thus in a very real sense, Richland County not only represents many facets of South Carolina's rich heritage, its recent past parallels that of scores of other communities throughout the United States whose citizens also must grapple with the opportunities and dilemmas presented by growth, expansion, and change.