Background: Among colon cancer patients some patients present with significant symptom burden needing upfront palliation-directed therapies, aimed to improve the quality of life of patients with severe illnesses. These include palliation-directed surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, pain management, or a combination of these. The extent to which these palliation-directed therapies are utilized in colon cancer remains under-explored. This study's purpose was to understand the trends in utilization and factors associated with palliation-directed treatment modalities among patients with colon cancer. Methods: From the National Cancer Database, we identified patients with colon cancer who received first-line palliation-directed therapies from 2004 to 2016 without an intent to give definitive therapy. We evaluated the use of these treatments over time and compared frequencies of categorical variables using Chi square tests. A multivariate logistic regression was also used to evaluate patient characteristics associated with the use of these treatments. Results: We identified a total of 21,516 patients receiving palliation-directed therapy among patients with colon cancer – 19,506 received single palliation-directed therapy, 908 received a combination of palliation-directed treatments without pain management and 1102 received a combination of palliation-directed treatments with pain management. Of the 21,516 patients who received single palliation-directed treatments, 50.6% and 49.4% were male and female, respectively. The mean age was 67 years. Most patients had no existing comorbidities (68.7%), lived in metropolitan areas (81.6%), had grade 2 (59.4%) and AJCC Clinical stage 4 colon cancer (32.6%). Overall, most patients received chemotherapy (50.7%) as a palliative treatment, followed by surgery (25.2%), pain management (14.4%) and radiation (9.7%). The utilization of chemotherapy (39.6% in 2004 to 63.1% in 2016) and pain management (9.7% in 2004 to 12.7% in 2016) increased over time while the utilization of surgery (37.1% in 2004 to 16.9% in 2016), and radiation (13.6% in 2004 to 7.3% in 2016) decreased over time. The type of facility, readmission rates, and proportion of individuals who were whites, elder (age>50), resided in metropolitan areas and had insurance were significantly different between groups. Male patients, patients without existing comorbidities, and patients with grade 2 tumors had higher odds of receiving surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy as palliative therapy compared to pain management. Conclusions: Utilization of first-line palliation-directed chemotherapy has increased significantly from 2004 to 2016 whereas surgery and radiation therapy use has decreased in that period. Notably, patient characteristics such as gender, absence of existing comorbidities and grade 2 tumors influence the choice of therapy.