@epriestley: Yes, I misread the comment and subsequently deleted my response. My apologies.

I still think the original request is the best solution. Creating save states or visibility filters sounds overly complicated. Why would you not want users to be able to delete columns (other than the axiom that you don't let users delete anything)?

This would be extremely useful for our sprint boards (either a default or stickiness).

I also need to be able to delete columns, not just hide them. I use hidden columns for various archival statuses and occasionally need to actually look at them. Unfortunately, when I turn on hidden columns I also get all the temporary/unneeded columns that I had to hide because I couldn't delete them.