Columbia - Adair County Tourism

Adair County is the home of 8,200 acre Green River Lake with great fishing, boating, and swimming facilities. The Holmes Bend Resort on Green River provides complete accommodations on land or lake. There are also three free public access boat ramps on the lake located within the county.
With Lake Cumberland, Dale Hollow, and Barren River State Parks nearby, visitors as well as residents have easy access to four of Kentucky's best fishing and recreation lakes, making Adair County ideal for vacations, retirement, or home.

Columbia became the county seat in 1803, settled by Revolutionary War veterans who were paid with grants of land by the mother state, Virginia. The town grew as these veterans claimed their land, began farms and provided services for pioneers moving westward. The scenic rolling hills landscape, plentiful water, wild game, timber and location as a crossroads appealed to people then as it does now.

The Public Square was laid out on the original town plat following the traditional European design; the founders decreed it should be the site for the county courthouse. The Victorian style courthouse built in 1885 is the second one built since 1806. While it will be functionally replaced by a new Justice Center a block away, the courthouse and clock tower are in the heart of Adair County.

Historic markers include:

• The 1816 house of Col. Wm and Jane Casey, who began the first permanent settlement in what is now Adair County.
• The 1823 house of Col. Dan and Mary Trabue. He was one of the founders of Columbia and a frontiersman whose narrative is in book form Westward into Kentucky by Chester Young.
• The site of the home of Jane Lampton Clemens, mother of Samuel Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain).
• The 1854 Union-Presbyterian Church. Presbyterians were active in early Kentucky building churches and schools.
• The near-by site of the Male & Female (M&F) School where girls as well as boys could be educated.
• The log home of late Kentucky authors Henry and Janice H. Giles. Most of Janice's 21 books were fiction based on Kentucky history. This house is on the National Register.
• One of originally five Rosenwald Schools in the county built around 1920 as an elementary school for African American children denied education in segregated public schools. A landscape memorial stone commemorates the site of another Rosenwald school, Jackman High.
• Boyhood home of Basketball Hall of Fame member Ed Diddle. Diddle Arena at Western Kentucky University is named in his honor.
• A memorial sculpture dedicated to the First Kentucky Calvary and its leader, Adair County native Col. Frank Wolford.

More about area history can be found here

For shoppers and antique hunters, local artists and craftsmen can be found here.

For additional information,
Contact: Sue Stivers at 270-384-6020 or
    email Tourism Email
    or visit or write Sue at the Chamber office
    201 Burkesville Street,
    P.O. Box 116,
    Columbia, KY 42728


Also see: Kentucky Tourism