How Our Beloved District Came to Be

I'm going to take a page out of Washington Cube's book with this post. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, no?

My little brother works with school students back in Bloomington, IN. He emailed me a question the other day that one of his students had asked him, so I've been doing a little research to share the answer with him and all of you.

The question is: How did Washington, DC end up with its name? What makes it "the District of Columbia" ???

Wikipedia is a wealth of information, as always. Washington, of course, is named for George Washington, the triumphant Revolutionary War general and our first President. The "District of Columbia" is the designation for the federal city, founded on July 16, 1790, a home for the federal government as specified in the U.S. Constitution. According to DC.gov, this federal district was first called the Territory of Columbia and the federal city the City of Washington. The name changed to the District of Columbia in 1793.

The "DC" part of Washington, DC is derived from an old, no-longer-in-use name for our fair country. This part I did not know. As you might guess, its origin is in Christopher Columbus, who sailed the ocean blue in 1492. The term "Columbian" and "Pre-Columbian" often refer to the times in North American history before and after his historic voyages. "Columbia" is an old poetic name for the U.S., personified in the form of a female icon who still survives as the symbol for Columbia pictures.

Isn't she prettier than Uncle Sam?

Our fair city has been known by many names over the years, including "the Federal City," "Washington City" and my favorite, "the District." George Washington himself never called it Washington, preferring to call it "the Federal City."

The location for the nation's capital was chosen by President Washington (wow, no one ever calls him that, it sounds funny) following an agreement between James Madison and Alexander Hamilton at a dinner party hosted by Thomas Jefferson. Wow, to be a fly on the wall!

The plan was for a city that would be 10 miles square, which is still the name for a political column in the Washington Monthly. The land for the federal city originally came from the states of Maryland and Virginia, with the plan that D.C. would have that nice, clean square/diamond shape. But, as anyone who's looked at a map like the ones on every Metro car knows, the Southwest border of DC is irregular and doesn't form that nice even shape. That's because in 1847 the land south of the Potomac River was "retroceded" to Virginia.



The Wikipedia entry says something interesting, that I want to keep trying to learn more about. It sort of hints that the City of Washington and the federal District of Columbia may be 2 separate entitites, but that "for most practical purposes they are considered to be the same." The Federal District has limited local rule, but is ruled "in all cases whatsoever" by the U.S. Congress. Hmmmm... that's a sore point, but we certainly know that Congress controls our purse strings. If you keep reading on some of these Wikipedia links, you'll learn some interesting stuff about the history of governance here in the District. I had no idea we once had a Governor!

And, also courtesy of Wikipedia, some interesting stats:

"If Washington, D.C. were considered a state, it would rank last in area behind Rhode Island, 50th in population ahead of Wyoming, and 36th in Gross State Product, ahead of 15 states, and its GSP per capita would be #1 by far compared to other states. It would also be the only state with an African-American majority."

There's a lot more I could add to this -- if I find some more info later I may update. But this has been for me to learn a little more, so I may be posting again about the history of the city I love. Heck, I haven't even mentioned L'Enfant! More to come... ;-)