Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C. (Washington DC) is the capital city of the United States of America. With a resident population of 617,996 in 2011, the city is the 27th largest in the country, although its population rises to over a million during the work week. D.C. is an abbreviation for the District of Columbia, the federal district coextensive with the city of Washington. The city is named after George Washington, military leader of the American Revolution and the first President of the United States. Columbia in this context is an early poetic name for the United States of America, a reference to Christopher Columbus, an early European explorer of the Americas.

The site was originally inhabited by the Nacotchtank, an Algonquin tribe, but by the early 18th century they had vacated and British settlement had begun. The town of Georgetown was chartered in the area in 1751. In the years after the Revolution, there began to be an acknowledgment that a specifically designated federal capital should be built. A federal territory was established by the U.S. Constitution in Article I, Section 8. Federal legislation in 1790 set the location of the territory on the Potomac River, subject to presidential selection. The original boundaries of the territory also encompassed what is now Arlington County and the City of Alexandria in Virginia, as well as the Cities of Georgetown and Washington, which remain in its territory. The district was surveyed in 1791-92. Congress began meeting in the territory in 1800, from which point it served as the national capital.

It was occupied by the British in 1814 as retaliation for the burning of York by American forces during the War of 1812, and the important federal buildings such as the White House and Capitol were burned by British troops. They were rebuilt, but the territory lacked paved roads and modern sanitation for decades afterward. The area south of the Potomac was returned to Virginia in 1846. The territory became heavily African-American in the mid-1800s. In 1871 Congress reorganized the territory into the District of Columbia, disestablishing the cities of Georgetown and Washington, but retaining the name of the latter city for the territory. The city vastly expanded in the decades after the Great Depression and World War Two, due to the increase in the federal bureaucracy, even though its footprint has not expanded.