Columbia PA At 300: What's New On The Ground During The Anniversary Year
August 6, 2026
August 6, 2026
Columbia turns 300 this year. John Wright's ferry crossing on the Susquehanna dates to 1726, and the borough is folding its tercentennial into the country's 250th on July 4 with fireworks at Glatfelter Memorial Field. That much you have probably seen on a flyer at the Market House or in a neighbor's Facebook share.
Here is the part the flyers do not tell you. The anniversary is happening in the same season a handful of downtown storefronts are changing hands. If you live here, the interesting story is not the milestone by itself. It is the milestone landing on top of a small food-scene shift you can actually eat your way through.
The 300th is not a look-back year in Columbia. It is a look-around year, because what you walked past last summer is not necessarily what is there this month.
Two of the more visible changes sit within a short walk of each other, and both are worth knowing about whether you are hosting out-of-town family for the Fourth or just trying to break your Wednesday takeout rut.
| Place | What changed | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Halo's Eatery | Food truck operator Angel Mejias opening a brick-and-mortar takeout kitchen in August 2026, with empanadas and rice-and-bean or mac-and-cheese bowls topped with pork or jerk chicken | 301 Cherry St., former Kristen's Katering space |
| Kristen's Katering | Moved out of Columbia | Relocated to 34 W. Market St. in Marietta |
| Hinkle's Restaurant | Reopened as the "new Hinkle's" under owners John Sipe, Tom Davis, and Robin Ortman, with a redesigned dining room and a bookable private meeting room | Same longtime Columbia address |
| Murphy's Mercantile & Co. | New gift shop added inside the Hinkle's footprint | Attached to Hinkle's |
If you have been getting breakfast at Hinkle's for twenty years, the ownership names may already be familiar. The team behind the reopening has decades of combined management history tied to the restaurant and the former pharmacy space it grew out of. What is new is the layout and the private room, which is a practical detail for anyone who has ever tried to fit ten people at the counter for a birthday.
The Halo's opening at 301 Cherry is the more consequential shift for the food mix downtown. It adds a Latin American takeout option in a walkable spot, and it fills a storefront that was empty for the summer stretch when Kristen's moved to Marietta.
Every Columbia guide on the internet will point a tourist toward the National Watch & Clock Museum and Wright's Ferry Mansion. Fine. You already know they are there. Wright's Ferry runs tours May through October at Second and Cherry, which is the useful piece if your cousin from Ohio finally visits in September.
The pieces of the anniversary calendar that reward residents are the recurring ones. Fourth Saturdays downtown carry a rotating theme each month, and first Saturdays bring karaoke at the Boring Bar from 7 to 10. Those are the dates you can plan a low-lift Saturday around without checking a ticket site. They also happen to be the nights when foot traffic downtown is thickest, which is when the antique shops along Locust feel the most alive.
For the actual tercentennial pin-in-the-calendar dates worth putting on the fridge:
The June Riverfest, which commemorates the Civil War burning of the mile-long covered bridge with live music, run and paddle races, and reenactors, is the anchor event locals plan the summer around. If you have lived here through a couple of Riverfests already, this year is the one where the crowd will skew larger because of the anniversary overlap.
You know the Susquehanna is there. The question is whether you actually use it on a Tuesday evening after work, or whether it has become the thing you point at when someone asks what you like about Columbia.
Three named businesses make the river a low-friction weeknight option rather than a weekend production:
The through-line here is that Columbia's river access is set up for people who live within a five-minute drive, not just people who came from Lancaster for the afternoon. That is a real property-level amenity, and it is worth naming when you talk to friends who assume all river towns require a boat and a truck.
Columbia's antique cluster is denser than most South Central Pennsylvania towns its size. Burning Bridge Antiques Market, Bootleg Antiques, and Tollbooth Antiques are the three that show up most often on a first pass, and each occupies a restored older building rather than a warehouse-with-plastic-bins setup. If you have been in town long enough to have a Saturday routine, you already know which one has the better glassware and which one you go to for furniture.
The Columbia Market House, first established in 1869, functions as the connective tissue between the antique stops and the food scene. Fresh produce, specialty foods, and hand-made goods all sit under one roof, which is the kind of amenity a lot of towns talk about wanting and Columbia actually has.
If you started this post assuming the 300th anniversary would come and go as a flag-and-fireworks event, look again at what is actually shifting on the ground:
Those four together are the reason the anniversary matters for a resident. It is not that Columbia is celebrating being 300. It is that the celebration is arriving during a moment when the storefront mix is genuinely different from what it was in 2024, and the recurring events give you weekly excuses to see the changes in person before they stop feeling new.
Because you will host someone. It is a 300th anniversary year, and a lot of people are going to remember Columbia exists.
That itinerary uses seven named local businesses and does not require a car after the first stop. It is also a fair reflection of what a good weekend in Columbia already looks like for the people who live here. The anniversary year just makes it easier to explain why.
If you own a home in Columbia and you are thinking about what this milestone year means for the borough over the next five, or if you are watching a family member circle the idea of moving closer, that is worth a conversation. Cindy Folckemer has spent more than two decades helping South Central Pennsylvania buyers and sellers make grounded decisions about where they live, and Columbia is one of the towns she watches most closely. Let's Connect.
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