Short answers, pulled from the story.
Columbus, Kentucky was first settled in 1804 on the Mississippi floodplain and is the oldest town in Kentucky's Jackson Purchase. Originally called Iron Banks, it was renamed Columbus in 1820, became the original Hickman County seat, and was formally incorporated in 1860. During the Civil War, Confederate forces seized and fortified the site; the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 later forced residents to rebuild the town on higher ground.
Confederate General Leonidas Polk seized Columbus in 1861 and attempted to stretch a large anchor chain across the entire Mississippi River to block Union boat traffic downriver. The town was also the northernmost spur of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad. Union General Ulysses S. Grant responded by engaging Confederate forces at Belmont, Missouri, in his first direct combat of the war.
Yes. Casey Jones took his first railroad job in Columbus, Kentucky in 1878, working as a telegrapher for the Mobile and Ohio Railroad at the age of 15. Columbus was the northernmost spur on the Mobile and Ohio line at that time.
The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 inundated Columbus along with hundreds of thousands of acres in the Mississippi Delta downstream. Survivors physically relocated the town to higher ground above the floodplain, and some original houses were saved and moved inland rather than abandoned.
Columbus-Belmont State Park borders Columbus, Kentucky to the west, occupying a bluff that rises nearly 200 feet above the Mississippi River. The park commemorates the Civil War actions at the site, including the Confederate fortification of Fort de Russey and General Grant's first combat engagement at nearby Belmont, Missouri.
Columbus, Kentucky had a population of 140 at the 2020 census, down from 229 recorded in the 2000 census. The town covers a total area of 0.8 square kilometers in Hickman County.