Columbia Archives celebrates the 50th anniversary of Columbia's beginning

     50 years ago today Jim Rouse made the first public announcement that the Rouse Company had purchased 14,100 acres in Howard County to develop our planned community. Below are some photos from that time from the Columbia Archives.
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       Tonight at 7 pm the Columbia Archives is opening an exhibit called "Creating Columbia: Going Public, Getting Started." The Archives is located in the American City Building located at 10227 Wincopin Circle. The exhibit will run through March 2014.

   In the photo above from the Columbia Archives Jim Rouse presents his plans to the Howard County Commissioners.  The photos below from the Archives shows how the area of Columbia was a patchwork
of farms at the time of the announcement.  A two lane Route 29 is seen at the bottom of the picture.

 

P.S.

    There were rumors around the County about who was buying up all this land in secret. One of the wildest was that the Russians were buying the land to establish a village for Russian diplomats. This was a time of the Cold War and the secrecy of the land purchases made sense at that time being connected to the Russians. Remember the movie "The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming?"

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Check out HowChow's Best of 2013 blog post for some good local eating.

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