Columbus: Stafford Opera House & the Oldest Town on the Colorado

Columbus claims to be one of the oldest surveyed and settled towns in Texas, laid out on the west bank of the Colorado River on ground that Stephen F. Austin's colonists knew as Beason's Crossing. This was Austin's-colony country, close to where the Runaway Scrape armies camped and crossed in 1836, and the town that grew here became the seat of Colorado County — with a courthouse, a magnificent cattle-baron opera house, and block after block of Victorian homes to prove its prosperity. This short walk circles the square: the domed courthouse under its famous live oaks, the three-story Stafford Opera House built by a cattle king, the old banks and stores, and the elegant homes just off the square. Wear comfortable shoes and look up — Columbus wears its nineteenth-century wealth in its cornices and cupolas.