I am often asked about the origin of local place names. There is a lot of history associated with names and their origins. Many place names in our area are derived from Chickasaw or Choctaw words while others are descriptive of early associations.
Several people have asked me about where Warpath Road in Columbus got its name. I have never seen any early reference to the road or its name. It is interesting, though, that it is just south of Highway 50, which closely follows the path of the old Upper Tuscaloosa Road. That road dates back at least to the early 1820s and may have been the route taken by Chickasaw and Choctaw warriors to attack a Creek Indian village near present day Tuscaloosa in January 1814.
Hundreds of Choctaws and Chickasaws had assembled at John Pitchlynn’s fort on Plymouth Bluff to join with Andrew Jackson’s Army in fighting the Creek Indians during the Creek War phase of the War of 1812. That army of warriors traveled east from Plymouth Bluff to attack the Creeks from the west as Jackson was advancing against the Creeks from the north. That may or may not be the origin of the name Warpath Road but it makes a good story.
Many local roads and streams actually have real stories to tell. Unfortunately, some of the names have been altered by people who did not understand or fully appreciate the heritage and story behind the original name.
■ Tombigbee — The earliest recorded name of the Tombigbee River was “The River of the Chicaca (Chickasaw).” That name dates to 1540 and the narratives of Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto. In 1805, Mississippi Territorial Judge Harry Toulmin wrote that the name “Tombigby” came from the Choctaw word “Elome-gabee” which meant “box maker.” Toulmin said that the river was named for “a box maker who formerly lived on some of its headwaters.” Pontotoc Land Office draughtsman Edward Fontaine wrote in 1848 that the Choctaws began calling the River “Itta-ombee-aye ika-abee” or wooden box making river about 1730. He explained the Choctaws named the river to commemorate the French teaching them to make wooden boxes in which to ship furs.
■ Military Road — Work on Andrew Jackson’s Military Road started in 1817 and it was completed in 1820. The Road was constructed after the War of 1812 had ended and there is no evidence Jackson ever set foot on the part of the road where Columbus was established. Jackson ordered the road to be built to provide a direct route between Nashville and New Orleans to address the difficulties he experienced in getting troops to New Orleans during the War of 1812. Since Jackson was instrumental in getting congressional approval for the road and seeing to it’s construction it was named after him.
■ Coal Fire Creek — On the highway from Columbus to Aliceville, Alabama, the road crosses a creek named Coal Fire Creek. The original name was Cold Fire Creek. Early settlers crossing the creek during the winter of 1818 or 1819 described the water as being so cold that it burned them like fire when they crossed it. So, they named the creek Cold Fire Creek. Years later people thought that name made no sense and as the story goes they changed the name to Coal Fire thinking it must have been associated with a fire in the north Alabama coal region where the creek’s headwaters were located.
■ Wolfe Road — In northeastern Lowndes County there is an old road now named Wolfe Road. That name is another example of people not appreciating history. It is one of the oldest roads in the area and in 1872 W.E. Gibbs told the story behind its name: “That part of our county … was then (around 1820) a ‘veritably a howling wilderness,’ being made so by innumerable bands of predatory wolves, so numerous that the rearing of stock was an impossibility. The Wolf Road took its name from this fact.”
■ Magby Creek — In 1817, Silas McBee settled on a creek in what is now East Columbus. The creek soon took the name of McBee Creek. As more settlers arrived in 1818 and 1819, a community formed at the nearby Tombigbee Ferry on the Military Road. At a meeting of the settlers McBee suggested the new town be named Columbus and by December of 1819 the new community was officially recognized as the Town of Columbus. However, the name of McBee’s Creek did not survive. Somehow it became corrupted to its present name of Magby Creek.
■ Magowah Creek — Magowah Creek flows eastward across southwestern Lowndes County to the Tombigbee River. Local tradition says that Magowah is taken from a Choctaw word for “impassable swamp or waters.” An 1817 survey shows the spelling as Macawa. That definition makes perfect sense as Magowah Bottom after a heavy rain is an almost impassable 5 or 6 mile wide swampy flood plain. Several large plantations were established on the fertile prairies around Magowah. By 1884 there was a Magowah School and the families in the area referred to their residence as Magowah.
On July 4,1906, Collier Hardy had a birthday party centered around a barbecue and shooting clay targets. The party was considered to be such a good time it became a Wednesday night event in the summer. Out of those summertime barbecues evolved Magowah Gun Club which was formally organized as a club by 1916. To complicate the story one of the 1820s settlers in Lowndes County was John McGowan who lived on the east side of the Tombigbee but not too far from the mouth of Magowah Creek and an 1839 map refers to the creek as McCowers Creek.
So much history is told in the story behind names and often it is not what we expect.
Rufus Ward is a local historian. Email your questions about local history to him at [email protected].
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
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