History of Madison, Wisconsin: from Teejop to the state capital

Quick answers

• Is Madison named after James Madison? Yes. James Duane Doty named his planned city in 1836 after James Madison, the fourth U.S. president, who had just died. He named the downtown streets after Madison's fellow delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, which is why you'll walk on Hamilton, Dayton, Mifflin, Wilson, Langdon and King streets.
• When was Madison founded? In 1836, when Doty laid out the town on paper and the territorial legislature chose it as the capital. The first settlers arrived in 1837. Madison became a village in 1846 and a city in 1856.
• Why is it the capital? In November 1836 the first territorial legislature, meeting at Belmont, picked the "paper town of Madison" from 17 possible sites. Doty's lobbying is credited with winning the vote.

Teejop: the Four Lakes

Long before the city, this was Teejop (Day-JOPE), the Ho-Chunk name for the area, meaning "Four Lakes": Mendota, Monona, Waubesa and Kegonsa. The Ho-Chunk Nation says its people "have always been here," and UW–Madison notes at least 12,000 years of human activity on what is now campus.

Between about 300 and 1300 CE, mound-building peoples raised thousands of earthen mounds here, many shaped like birds, bears and other animals. More than 1,200 mound sites were once known around the Four Lakes. Most were lost to farming and building in the 1800s, but the Madison area still has one of the highest concentrations of remaining effigy mounds, including 34 mound sites on the UW campus. Ho-Chunk families kept camping by the lakes into the 1940s. See our lakes guide and hiking guide for places to see mounds.

Founding the capital (1836–1856)

• 1829: Judge James Duane Doty first saw the isthmus between Lakes Mendota and Monona. He and Michigan Governor Stevens T. Mason later bought about 1,200 acres there.
• 1836: Wisconsin Territory was organized on July 4. Doty named his town for James Madison, and in late November the legislature made it the capital. The House vote, on November 28, was 15 to 11.
• 1837: Madison was surveyed and platted, and work began on the first Capitol. Eben and Rosaline Peck became the first white settlers, running a boarding house for the Capitol's builders.
• 1838: The territorial legislature met in Madison for the first time.
• 1846: Madison, population 626, became a village; Wisconsin's first constitutional convention met here the same year.
• 1848: Wisconsin became a state on May 29, and the University of Wisconsin was chartered on July 26. Its first class met on February 5, 1849.
• 1856: Madison became a city, with 6,864 residents.

War, the Capitol and the Progressive Era

• 1861: When the Civil War began, Governor Alexander Randall turned the state fairgrounds into Camp Randall, where most of Wisconsin's soldiers were mustered. Today it's the site of the Badgers' stadium.
• 1857–1869: A second, larger Capitol went up, with its dome finished in 1869.
• 1904: On February 27, fire destroyed much of the Capitol's interior.
• 1906–1917: The current Capitol, designed by George B. Post & Sons of New York, was built one wing at a time and finished in 1917 for $7.2 million. Daniel Chester French's gilded "Wisconsin" statue went on top of the dome in 1914. It's the fifth building to serve as Wisconsin's capitol.
• 1901: Robert M. La Follette became the state's first native-born governor. In 1903 his Progressive allies passed a direct primary election law and new taxes on railroads. His Maple Bluff home is a National Historic Landmark; see our Maple Bluff guide.
• 1905: Under President Charles Van Hise, the university made the "Wisconsin Idea," that its work should improve lives across the state, a guiding principle.

Modern Madison

• 1938: Frank Lloyd Wright first designed Monona Terrace, a civic center on Lake Monona. He reworked it for two decades and signed off on final plans weeks before his death in 1959.
• 1967–1970: Madison was a center of protest against the Vietnam War, beginning with a 1967 campus demonstration against Dow Chemical. On August 24, 1970, a bomb aimed at the Army Mathematics Research Center in Sterling Hall killed physics researcher Robert Fassnacht.
• 1972: The Dane County Farmers' Market started on the Capitol Square with five farmers. See our farmers markets guide.
• 1997: After voters approved it in 1992, Monona Terrace finally opened on July 18, 1997, nearly 60 years after Wright's first design.
• 2001: The State Capitol became a National Historic Landmark after a long restoration.
• 2004: Overture Center for the Arts opened downtown, funded by a gift from Jerry Frautschi that grew to $205 million.
• Today: Madison has grown from 269,840 people in the 2020 Census to an estimated 286,233 in 2025. See our Madison facts and things to do guides.

See the history yourself

• State Capitol: free guided tours run daily, and the observation deck is open mid-April through December. See our museums guide.
• Wisconsin Veterans Museum on the Capitol Square, and the Wisconsin Historical Society, which is building a new Wisconsin History Center on the Square.
• Effigy mounds on the UW campus, at Edna Taylor Conservation Park and in other city parks.
• Monona Terrace, with its rooftop garden over Lake Monona. See our UW campus guide for Bascom Hill and Camp Randall.