The United States was already well established by the time that congress selected the area around the Potomac River as the site that would become the capital of the union.
People began referring to the area as the City of Washington around 1791, and the famous "10 miles square" of land was ceded by the surrounding states to ensure that no one state had the honour of being capital of the union.
The city was laid out sybolically by the mathematician Benjamin Banneker along strict Geometric lines, and work began in earnest on the Capitol building in 1793.
Although the location of the capital had been chosen as the midpoint in the country, and a way to unite north and south, the civil war almost put an end to the dream, although the symbol of America grew in importance following the bloodshed.
In the beginning of the 20th century, the many monuments and parks that now fill the city were begun, and completed a major period of remodelling that had begun in the 1870s under governor Alexander Shepherd.
Despite being derided as the National Capital of murder and corruption by many of the population, the city still attracts many tourists every year, and the terrorist attacks that shocked America in September 2001 and led to a clampdown on visiting monuments, are now being recovered from, and the city is finally returning to something resembling normality.
