Columbia, South Carolina
Columbia is the capital and second largest city of the U.S. state of South Carolina, with a population estimate of 134,309 as of 2016. The city serves as the county seat of Richland County, and a portion of the city extends into neighboring Lexington County. It is the center of the Columbia metropolitan statistical area, which had a population of 767,598 as of the 2010 United States Census, growing to 817,488 by July 1, 2016, according to 2015 U.S. Census estimates. The name "Columbia" is a poetic term used for the United States, originating from the name of Christopher Columbus.
Colony of British Columbia (1866–1871)
The Colony of Vancouver Island had been created in 1849 to bolster British claims to the whole island and the adjacent Gulf Islands, and to provide a North Pacific home port for the Royal Navy at Esquimalt. By the mid-1850s, the Island Colony's non-indigenous population was around 800 people; a mix of mostly British, French-Canadian, Metis, Hawaiians, but with handfuls of Iroquoians and Cree in the employ of the fur company, and a few Belgian and French Oblate priests (thousands of first nations died due to the smallpox epidemic). Three years earlier, the Treaty of Washington had established the boundary between British North America and the United States of America west of the Rocky Mountains along the 49th parallel. The mainland area of present-day British Columbia, Canada was an unorganised territory under British sovereignty until 1858. The region was under the de facto administration of the Hudson's Bay Company, and its regional chief executive, James Douglas, who also happened to be Governor of Vancouver Island. The region was informally given the name New Caledonia, after the fur-trading district which covered the central and northern interior of the mainland west of the Rockies.