Columbia County High Point Trip Report
Date: December 16, 2002
Author: Gene Daniell
The apparent high point of Columbia County is at a 205 ft spot elevation on the south side of US 90 in
front of the Lake City Airport in the village of Wilburn. This point occurs at the outside point of a curve
and may well have been raised a foot or two to bank it.
I went to visit the other two possible points, which are shown as being in a lumber yard belonging to
Cochran Forest Products (the sign giving the name of this business isn't visible from the main road).
The lumber yard has obviously been leveled and if there ever were natural high points they aren't there any more
(and what shows on the map, given the general flatness of this area, might well have been sawdust or earth piles).
From US 90, you take the street that runs north at a point just east of and opposite to the main entrance to
the airfield, cross the railroad tracks, and turn left at the T beyond the tracks. This area is very flat,
and I suspect the BM 202 shown along the railroad tracks to the west is representative. As you come back to US
90 there is an abrupt rise of 2 - 3 feet to the highway grade. The question then is whether the one 205 foot
and two 204 foot spot elevations are natural or a raised roadbed - it is not obvious why the roadbed would
have to be raised 3 feet or so in such flat country. Probably the natural high point is somewhere under the road,
somewhere close to the 205 foot spot elevation; otherwise it is somewhere within that big 200 foot
contour circle that contains most of the village of Wilburn.