In its 25th year, Sally Salamander tour in Columbia gets a refresh — what’s new

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A popular walking tour in Columbia has a new look with refreshed experiences.

Experience Columbia SC recently unveiled the relaunch of the Sally Salamander Walking Tour with a new design, interactive printed collateral and user-friendly digital experience.

The Sally Salamander Walking Tour was first created by the Leadership Columbia class of 2009 before students at Heathwood Hall expanded the free, walkable scavenger hunt, doubling the number of locations to 20, in late 2018, according to a news release.

The tour guides visitors to some of Columbia’s downtown historic landmarks, notable businesses, public art installations and more. Sally is a spotted salamander, the state amphibian of South Carolina, and this year marks the 25th anniversary of the spotted salamander earning that designation, the release stated.

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Experience Columbia SC worked with local artist Cait Maloney on the redesign to include logos and icons in line with ECSC’s existing brand color wheel that were used to create stickers, buttons, an interactive booklet, a refreshed website and the new digital pass experience, the release stated.

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“Experience Columbia SC works with Bandwango, a platform specifically designed to showcase passes and trails within a destination. With the success of our Pimento Cheese Passport, Reconstruction Trail and COOL and CULTURE Passes, we thought it would be a great time to share the Sally Salamander Walking Tour with visitors to our community through this platform,” said Kelly Barbrey, vice president of marketing and communications for Experience Columbia SC, in the release.

“We learned through our Visitors Center that many of the people interested in the Sally Salamander tour are families with young children, so we gave Sally a new fun and friendly look and added some additional components to the tour, like a booklet with stickers so children can check off the different locations as they go. The tour starts at the Columbia SC Visitors Center, so guests can pick up the booklet there and be on their way to find all the salamanders.”

The remaining 19 locations along the tour are: the South Carolina State House, the Arcade Mall, the Palmetto Building, Never Bust by Blue Sky, Columbia Museum of Art, Richland Library, The Big Apple, Blue Marlin, Adluh Flour Mill, The Gong, Lincoln Street Tunnel, USC Horseshoe, Trinity Cathedral, Halls Chophouse, Hanging Drums, Mast General Store, The Nick, Sweet Cream Co. and Villa Tronco.

Several locations were identified — the South Carolina State House (located at Bourbon on Main Street), Adluh and Trinity Cathedral – whose bronze salamanders were either never installed or missing due to construction or general wear and tear over the years. Those statues have been reordered and will be reinstalled later this month, according to the release.