Columbus, Ohio, once spent $95 million to celebrate Columbus Day. Now, it's canceled.

In 1992, an 88-acre park a couple miles from downtown Columbus, Ohio, transformed into a floral wonderland. The six-month exhibit was like a cross between a horticulture-obsessed version of Disney’s Epcot and a miniature World’s Fair, featuring a waterfall, a rose garden with 130 varieties, a display of grasses from almost every continent on earth and a “community of nations garden” that “has got to be one of the main roads of heaven,” as The Washington Post described it then.

It was all for Christopher Columbus, billed as America’s “centerpiece” celebration marking the 500th anniversary of his voyage to the New World in 1492. Boycotted by Native Americans, who called attention to Columbus’s abuse of indigenous people in nationwide demonstrations that year, the Ohio celebration came at a price of $95 million.

http://www.providencejournal.com/news/20181008/columbus-ohio-once-spent-95-million-to-celebrate-columbus-day-now-its-canceled