Madison, WI Real Estate

Madison is the capital of the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Dane County. Madison is also home to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

As of a 2005 census projection, Madison had a population of 221,551, making it the second largest city in Wisconsin, after Milwaukee, and the 77th largest in the United States. Counting the city's immediate suburbs, the area population exceeds 400,000. The city forms the core of the United States Census Bureau 's Madison Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of Dane County and neighboring Iowa and Columbia counties, had a 2000 census population of 501,774, and is one of the fastest-growing in Wisconsin.

Madison was created in 1836 when a former federal judge named James Duane Doty purchased over a thousand acres (4 km ) of swamp and forest land on the isthmus between Lakes Mendota and Monona within the Four Lakes region, with the intention of building a new city on the site. Wisconsin Territory had been created earlier in the year, and the territorial legislature had convened in Belmont, Wisconsin. One of the legislature's tasks was to choose a permanent location for the territory's capital city. Doty lobbied aggressively for the legislature to select Madison as the new capital, offering buffalo robes to the freezing legislators and promising choice Madison lots 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. Despite the fact that Madison was still only a city on paper, the territorial legislature voted on November 28 in favor of choosing Madison for 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 because of its location between the highly populated lead mining regions in the southwest and Wisconsin's oldest city, Green Bay in the northeast. Being named for James Madison, a much-admired " Founding Father " who had just died, and having streets named after every Founding Father, also helped attract votes. [ citation needed ]

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