Columbus Day

Columbus Day is celebrated in October to commemorate Christopher Columbus's landing in the New World (at San Salvador Island in the Bahamas) on October 12. The October 12 page of American Memory’s Today in History website provides historical references to Columbus Day and its meaning:  During the morning of October 12, 1492, a sailor on board the Pinta saw land. The following day, 90 crewmembers of Columbus’s fleet surveyed what was an island in the Bahamas and named it San Salvador (now Watling Island, then called Guanahani by native Bahamians). This ended a voyage that began nearly ten weeks earlier in Palos, Spain. 

The first recorded celebration of Columbus Day in the United States took place on October 12, 1792.  The day was organized by the Society of St. Tammany, also known as the Columbian Order. It commemorated the 300th anniversary of the landing of Columbus and his crew. 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.”

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, the day has been celebrated as a federal holiday. In many locations across the country Americans hold parades to commemorate the day. You can find additional resources using the answers.USA.gov webpage about Columbus Day.