Madison is the capital of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. It is the second-most populous city in the state (after Milwaukee), with a population of 269,840 at the 2020 census. The Madison metropolitan area has an estimated 708,000 residents. With a downtown centrally located on an isthmus between Lakes Mendota and Monona, the city also encompasses Lake Wingra. Founded in 1836, Madison is named after American Founding Father and President James Madison. The city is the county seat of Dane County.
As the state capital, Madison is home to government chambers, including the Wisconsin State Capitol. It is also home to the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. Major companies in the city include American Family Insurance, Exact Sciences Corporation, and TruStage Financial Group. Tourism also plays a vital role in the local economy, generating over $1 billion in 2018. The city's cultural and recreational institutions include the Chazen Museum of Art, Henry Vilas Zoo, Olbrich Botanical Gardens, and Overture Center for the Arts.
As of 2024, Madison was the fastest-growing city in the state, and as of 2026, the State DOA estimated that the population was 300,153.The city has a longstanding reputation for progressive political activity and is regarded as Wisconsin's most politically liberal city. The presence of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and other educational institutions significantly shapes the local economy, culture, and demographics. Madison has one of the highest numbers of parks and playgrounds per capita among the 100 largest U.S. cities and has been recognized as a bicycle-friendly community. Within the city are nine National Historic Landmarks, including several buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
History
Native Americans
Before Europeans, humans inhabited the area in and around Madison for about 12,000 years. The Ho-Chunk called the region Teejop (Ho-Chunk pronunciation: [teːdʒop]) meaning 'land of the four lakes' (Mendota, Monona, Waubesa, and Kegonsa). Numerous effigy mounds, constructed for ceremonial and burial purposes more than 1,000 years earlier, dotted the rich prairies around the lakes. Dugout canoes found near many small lakes and rivers are prompting new anthropological research projects.
Founding
Madison's modern origins begin in 1829, when former federal judge James Duane Doty purchased 1,261 acres (4 km2) of swamp and forest land on the isthmus between Lakes Mendota and Monona for $1,500, with the intention of building a city in the Four Lakes region. When the Wisconsin Territory was created in 1836 the territorial legislature convened in Belmont, Wisconsin. One of the legislature's tasks was to select a permanent location for the territory's capital. Doty lobbied aggressively for Madison as the new capital, offering buffalo robes to the freezing legislators and choice lots in Madison 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.
Doty named his city for James Madison, the fourth president of the U.S. who had died on June 28, 1836. He named the streets for the other 38 signers of the U.S. Constitution. Although the city existed only on paper, the territorial legislature voted on November 28, 1836, to make Madison 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 between the highly populated lead mining regions in the southwest and Wisconsin's oldest city, Green Bay, in the northeast.
Expansion
The cornerstone for the first Wisconsin State Capitol was laid in 1837, and the legislature first met there in 1838. On October 9, 1839, Kintzing Prichett registered the plat of Madison at the registrar's office of the then-territorial Dane County. Madison was incorporated as a village in 1846, with a population of 626. When Wisconsin became a state in 1848, Madison remained the capital.
The Wisconsin Constitution provided for "the establishment of a state university, at or near the seat of state government..." The University of Wisconsin was created on July 26, 1848, by an act of Governor Nelson Dewey. A permanent campus site was soon selected: an area of 50 acres (20.2 ha) "bounded north by Fourth lake, east by a street to be opened at right angles with King street", [later State Street] "south by Mineral Point Road (University Avenue), and west by a carriage-way from said road to the lake." The regents' building plans called for a "main edifice fronting towards the Capitol, three stories high, surmounted by an observatory for astronomical observations." This building, University Hall, now known as Bascom Hall, was completed in 1859.
The Milwaukee & Mississippi Railroad, a predecessor of the Milwaukee Road, connected to Madison in 1854. Madison was incorporated as a city in 1856, with a population of 6,863, leaving the unincorporated remainder as a separate Town of Madison. The original capitol was replaced in 1863 and this second capitol burned in 1904. The current capitol was built between 1906 and 1917.
During the Civil War, Madison served as a center of the Union Army in Wisconsin. The intersection of Milwaukee, East Washington, Winnebago, and North Streets is known as Union Corners because a tavern there was the last stop for Union soldiers before leaving to fight the Confederates. Camp Randall, on Madison's west side, was built and used as a training camp, a military hospital, and a prison camp for captured Confederate soldiers. After the war, the Camp Randall site was absorbed into the University of Wisconsin, and Camp Randall Stadium was built there in 1917. In 2004 the last vestige of active military training on the site was removed when the stadium renovation replaced a firing range used for ROTC training.
1960s and 1970s
In the 1960s and 1970s, the Madison counterculture centered on the neighborhood of Mifflin and Bassett streets, known as "Miffland". The area contained many three-story houses that had been turned into apartments where students and counterculture youth lived, painted murals, and operated the cooperative grocery store the Mifflin Street Co-op. Residents of the neighborhood often came into conflict with authorities, particularly during the administration of Republican mayor Bill Dyke. Students saw Dyke as a direct antagonist in efforts to protest the Vietnam War because of his efforts to suppress local protests. The annual Mifflin Street Block Party became a focal point for protest, although by the late 1970s it had become a mainstream community party.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, thousands of students and other citizens took part in anti-Vietnam War marches and demonstrations, with more violent incidents drawing national attention to the city and UW campus. These included the 1967 student protest of Dow Chemical Company, with 74 injured; the 1969 strike to secure greater representation and rights for African-American students and faculty, which resulted in the involvement of the Wisconsin Army National Guard; and the 1970 fire that damaged the Army ROTC headquarters housed in the University of Wisconsin Armory and Gymnasium. It culminated with the Sterling Hall bombing in 1970, which was intended to destroy the university's Sterling Hall bombing#Army Mathematics Research Center. It also caused massive destruction to other parts of the building and nearby buildings and resulted in the death of researcher Robert Fassnacht.
These protests are the subject of the 1979 documentary The War at Home. David Maraniss's 2004 book They Marched into Sunlight incorporates the 1967 Dow protests into a larger Vietnam War narrative. Tom Bates wrote the book Rads on the subject. According to Bates, Dyke's attempt to suppress the annual Mifflin Street Block Party "would take three days, require hundreds of officers on overtime pay, and engulf the student community from the nearby Southeast Dorms to Langdon Street's fraternity row. Tear gas hung like heavy fog across the Isthmus." In the fracas, student activist Paul Soglin, then a city alderman, was arrested twice and taken to jail. Soglin was later elected mayor of Madison in 1973 and served a total of 22 years as mayor.
21st century
Madison was the site of the 2011 Wisconsin protests against Act 10, a bill proposed by Governor Scott Walker that abolished almost all collective bargaining for public worker unions. The protests at the capitol ranged from 10,000 to over 100,000 people and lasted several months. On October 31, 2022, the city annexed the majority of the remaining Town of Madison. The 2024 Abundant Life Christian School shooting occurred on the city's east side, resulting in three deaths and six injuries.
Geography
Madison is in the center of Dane County in south-central Wisconsin, 77 miles (124 km) west of Milwaukee and 122 miles (196 km) northwest of Chicago. Downtown Madison is on an isthmus between Lake Mendota and Lake Monona; the city's trademark "Lake, City, Lake" reflects this geography. Madison completely surrounds the suburbs of Maple Bluff, Monona, and Shorewood Hills. Madison shares borders with its largest suburb, Sun Prairie, and three other suburbs, Middleton, McFarland, and Fitchburg. Other suburbs include Cottage Grove, DeForest, Verona and Waunakee as well as Mount Horeb, Oregon, Stoughton, and Cross Plains further into Dane County.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of 94.03 square miles (243.54 km2), of which 76.79 square miles (198.89 km2) is land and 17.24 square miles (44.65 km2) is water. The city's lowest elevation is the intersection of Regas Road and Corporate Drive on the east side, at 836.9 ft (255.1 m). The highest elevation is located along Pleasant View Road on the far west side of the city, atop a portion of a terminal moraine of the Green Bay Lobe of the Wisconsin glaciation, at 1,190 ft (360 m).
The city is sometimes described as "The City of Four Lakes", comprising the four successive lakes of the Yahara River: Lake Mendota ("Fourth Lake"), Lake Monona ("Third Lake"), Lake Waubesa ("Second Lake") and Lake Kegonsa ("First Lake"), although Waubesa and Kegonsa are not actually in Madison, but just south of it. A fifth smaller lake, Lake Wingra, is within the city as well; it is connected to the Yahara River chain by Wingra Creek. The Yahara flows into the Rock River, which flows into the Mississippi River.
Neighborhoods
Local identity varies throughout Madison, with over 120 officially recognized neighborhood associations. Historically, the north, east, and south sides were blue collar while the west side was white collar, and to a certain extent this remains true. Students dominate on the University of Wisconsin campus and to the east into downtown, while university faculty have been a major presence in the neighborhoods to its south and in Shorewood Hills to its west.
Capitol Square is Madison's central business district, featuring high-rise apartments, hotels, restaurants, shops, museums and the Wisconsin State Capitol. It hosts public events including the Dane County Farmers' Market, Concerts on the Square, and the Art Fair on the Square. State Street connects the University of Wisconsin campus to Capitol Square and is home to numerous bars and theaters. Langdon Street is another main road in the area, known for its fraternity and sorority houses.
The Dudgeon-Monroe neighborhood neighbors downtown Madison. It is located around Monroe Street, a commercial area which has local shops, coffee houses, dining and galleries and features Wingra Park, where people rent paddle boats and canoes at a boathouse on Lake Wingra. The Hilldale area comprises the Hill Farms-University neighborhood, Sunset Village neighborhood, and part of Shorewood Hills. The area contains Hilldale Shopping Center and a suburban setting.
The Marquette neighborhood sits on the near-east side of Madison and Williamson Street, its main thoroughfare, is known for locally owned shops and restaurants, including the Willy Street Co-op. Houses in the Marquette neighborhood are included in the Marquette Bungalows Historic District and Orton Park Historic District. The area is also the location of festivals like the Waterfront Festival, La Fete de Marquette, Orton Park Festival, and Willy Street Fair. The Williamson-Marquette area is a hub for Madison's bohemian culture, known for colorfully painted houses and murals.
Park Street, a diverse area in southern Madison, passes through several neighborhoods including Burr Oaks and Greenbush. It has been described as the "most racially and economically diverse area of Madison" and is home to ethnic restaurants and stores.
Climate
Madison, along with the rest of the state, has a humid continental climate (Köppen: Dfa), characterized by variable weather patterns and a large seasonal temperature variance: winter temperatures can be well below freezing, with moderate to occasionally heavy snowfall and temperatures reaching 0 °F or −17.8 °C on 17 mornings annually; high temperatures in summer average in the lower 80s °F (27–28 °C), reaching 90 °F (32.2 °C) on an average 12 afternoons per year, with lower humidity levels than winter but higher than spring. Summer accounts for a greater proportion of annual rainfall, but winter still sees significant precipitation.
Demographics
2020 census
As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 269,840. Madison was the fastest-growing city in Wisconsin over the 2010s. It is the second-most populous city in the state, the 16th-most populous city in the Midwest, and 77th-most populous city in the United States.