Early in the morning of October 12, 1492, a sailor on board the Pinta sighted land, beginning a new era of European exploration and expansion. The next day, the ninety crew members of Columbus’ three-ship fleet ventured onto the Bahamian island that he named San Salvador (now Watling Island, and then called Guanahaní by the natives), ending a voyage begun nearly ten weeks earlier in Palos, Spain.
As a reward for his valuable discovery, the Spanish crown granted Columbus the right to bear arms. His new coat of arms added the royal charges of Castile and Leon and an image of islands to his traditional family crest. Columbus further modified the design to include a continent beside the pictured islands.
Before his final voyage, the Spanish monarchs prepared a Book of Privileges, a collection of agreements showing how Columbus was remunerated for his explorations. In 1502, four copies of the book were known to exist. The Library of Congress’s copy of this work is one of the Top Treasures included in the online exhibition American Treasures of the Library of Congress.
The first recorded celebration of Columbus Day in the United States took place on October 12, 1792. Organized by the Society of St. Tammany, also known as the Columbian Order, it commemorated the 300th anniversary of Columbus’ landing.
The 400th anniversary of the event inspired the first official Columbus Day holiday in the United States. President Benjamin Harrison issued a proclamation in 1892, “recommending to the people the observance in all their localities of the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America…” and describing Columbus as “the pioneer of progress and enlightenment.” Since then, school programs, plays, and community festivities have been organized across the country in celebration of Columbus Day. Columbus and the Discovery of America, Imre Kiralfy’s “grand dramatic, operatic, and ballet spectacle,” is among the more elaborate tributes created for this commemoration. The World’s Columbian Exposition or Chicago’s World’s Fair, which opened in the summer of 1893, was designed to commemorate Columbus’ discovery of the New World 400 years earlier.
In the decades that followed, the Knights of Columbus, an international Roman Catholic fraternal benefit society, lobbied state legislatures to declare October 12 a legal holiday. Colorado was the first state to do so on April 1, 1907. New York declared Columbus Day a holiday in 1909 and on October 12, 1909, New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes led a parade that included the crews of two Italian ships, several Italian-American societies, and legions of the Knights of Columbus. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt designated Columbus Day (then celebrated October 12) a national holiday in 1934.
Since 1971, when Columbus Day was designated the second Monday in October, it has been celebrated as a federal holiday. In many locations across the country Americans hold parades to commemorate the day.
- Learn more about the explorer’s historical legacy by visiting the exhibition 1492: An Ongoing Voyage.
- Search the Library of Congress pictorial collections on Columbus to find photos of monuments, paintings and drawings of the explorer and his landings in the New World, and numerous places named for him. See, for example, one of the largest monuments to the explorer, the Columbus Monument at Columbus Circle in New York City.
- Search on the phrase Columbus Day in Chronicling America, a collection of historic American newspapers, to find newspaper articles from across the country describing celebrations, as well as advertisements for traditional Columbus Day sales.
- Read about the Exploration and Early Settlement of what today is the United States in Parallel Histories: Spain, the United States, and the American Frontier, a collaborative digital library project between the Library of Congress and the National Library of Spain. Look for maps, prints and photographs, and other documents.
- Explore the following collections which testify to the importance of Spain and the Spanish language in the exploration and European settlement of North America and the Caribbean:
- Examine an award-winning quilt commemorating the Sesquicentennial of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the New World (1492-1992). This quilt is featured in the collection Quilts and Quiltmaking in America, 1978 to 1996.