Madison Wisconsin History & Facts

Madison is the county seat of Dane County and the capital city of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2020 census the population was 269,840, making it the second-largest city in Wisconsin by population, after Milwaukee, and the 80th-largest in the U.S. The city forms the core of the Madison Metropolitan Area which includes Dane County and neighboring Iowa, Green, and Columbia counties for a population of 680,796. Madison is named for American Founding Father and President James Madison. The city is located on the traditional land of the Ho-Chunk, and the Madison area is known as Dejope, meaning "four lakes", or Taychopera, meaning "land of the four lakes", in the Ho-Chunk language.

Located on an isthmus and lands surrounding four lakes—Lake Mendota, Lake Monona, Lake Kegonsa and Lake Waubesa—the city is home to the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the Wisconsin State Capitol, the Overture Center for the Arts, and the Henry Vilas Zoo. Madison is home to an extensive network of parks and bike trails; it has the most parks and playgrounds per capita of any of the 100 largest U.S. cities and is one of five communities to have received a "Platinum Bicycle Friendly Community" rating from the League of American Bicyclists. Madison is also home to nine National Historic Landmarks, including several buildings designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright, such as his 1937 Jacobs I House, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Residents of Madison are known as Madisonians.Madison has long been a center for progressive political activity, protests, and demonstrations, and contemporary Madison is considered the most politically liberal city in Wisconsin.The presence of the University of Wisconsin–Madison (the largest employer in the state) as well as other educational institutions has a significant impact on the economy, culture, and demographics of Madison.

As of 2021, Madison is the fastest-growing city in Wisconsin. Madison's economy features a large and growing technology sector, and the Madison area is home to the headquarters of Epic Systems, American Family Insurance, Exact Sciences, Promega, American Girl, Sub-Zero, Lands' End, Spectrum Brands, a regional office for Google, and the University Research Park, as well as many biotechnology and health systems startups. Madison is a popular visitor destination, with tourism generating over $1 billion for Dane County's economy in 2018. A booming population combined with a lack in the quantity of housing due to restrictive zoning density regulations have contributed to rising housing costs in many Madison neighborhoods, with a 23% increase in median rent between 2014 and 2019.

Before Europeans, humans inhabited the area in and around Madison for about 12,000 years. In 1800, the Madison area was Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) Country. The Native Americans called this place Taychopera (Ta-ko-per-ah), meaning "land of the four lakes" (Mendota, Monona, Waubesa, and Kegonsa). Effigy mounds, which had been constructed for ceremonial and burial purposes over 1,000 years earlier, dotted the rich prairies around the lakes.

Madison's European origins begin in 1829, when former federal judge James Duane Doty purchased over a thousand acres (4 km2) of swamp and forest land on the isthmus between Lakes Mendota and Monona, with the intention of building a city in the Four Lakes region. He purchased 1,261 acres for $1,500. When the Wisconsin Territory was created in 1836 the territorial legislature convened in Belmont, Wisconsin. One of the legislature's tasks was to select a permanent location for the territory's capital. Doty lobbied aggressively for Madison as the new capital, offering buffalo robes to the freezing legislators and choice lots in Madison at discount prices to undecided voters.He had James Slaughter plat two cities in the area, Madison and "The City of Four Lakes", near present-day Middleton.

Doty named his city Madison for James Madison, the fourth President of the U.S. who had died on June 28, 1836, and he named the streets for the other 38 signers of the U.S. Constitution. Although the city existed only on paper, the territorial legislature voted on November 28, 1836 in favor of Madison as its capital, largely because of its location halfway between the new and growing cities around Milwaukee in the east and the long established strategic post of Prairie du Chien in the west, and between the highly populated lead mining regions in the southwest and Wisconsin's oldest city, Green Bay, in the northeast.

Famous Peoples From Madison Wisconsin

Ruth Ball

Ruth Norton Ball (December 12, 1879 – December 12, 1960) (born Ruth Norton Ball) was a sculptor and a competitor in art competitions at the 1928 Summer Olympics.

Ball was born to Charles and Ida Ball on December 12, 1879, in Madison, Wisconsin. She went on to become the Curator of Indian Arts at the San Diego Museum of Art. She taught stone sculpture at the San Diego Art Institute. Ball died in El Cajon, California on her birthday in 1960.

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