Alternate Locations for D.C.

I've been working on some ideas for an American TL with its POD in the 1780s, so before Washington DC was chosen to be the new capital. I know that I want a new city to be created to be the capital, but also want to avoid the real location if possible. My favorite location I've come up with is Wilmington, Delaware, but the idea is that the capital should be more central than Philadelphia, so Wilmington clearly doesn't work. What are some other proposed areas or areas that could proposed, other than the OTL location of DC?

EDIT: Another idea I just had was possibly putting it where Salisbury, Maryland is located, on the Delmarva Peninsula.
 
Last edited:
I swaer we have had a conversation on this before but wasn't the original choice for the capital further down the Potomac river????
 
They could've put it at the original Jamestown site.
Only if they built it on rafts. The river has meandered over the actual site, the Jamestown that one can visit today is a replica.

Perhaps if Zorqal would say why the precise spot chosen OTL is one he wants to avoid, we'd be better fixed to suggest other locations?

It sounds to me like the OTL site was intelligently chosen as far as having a central location goes. It is unfortunately below, rather than straddling, the Maxon-Dixon line which was pretty awkward during the Civil War, so I'd go with a more northerly site, say straddling the MD-PN border. But the farther north you go, the less conveniently the site is served by the Chesapeake Bay system.

Perhaps, as with Brasilia, the site should have been placed far into the west, to anticipate expansion of settlement and to draw it.

But before anyone conceived of railroads, this meant dooming the capital to be very difficult to access from any established settlements, slow communications, and a major effort digging canals or even making the sorts of crude roads that were expected in this day. It is not just that the site would be more distant from seashores and inland beyond the currently developed zone--it would be up in the foothills of the Appalachians, in inherently rough terrain.

Or they could have been very very bold and ambitious and set the new capital west of that range, on the eastern sheaf of rivers feeding into the Mississippi. I'm guessing such a Federal District would be in Ohio or Kentucky. And it would pose really severe communications problems for everyone, with westward settlement not really justifying it until the 1840s or so.

Actually, I believe DC as selected OTL was intended precisely to be a gateway to the west. Sea traffic could reach it, and thence upriver leads to passes to the Ohio country. As things turned out, New York state became the major gateway, and indeed NYC was the temporary capital while Washington city was being laid out. But it was too far north for Southern states to be content with it. The far northwest end of the Chesapeake was therefore it. This means that any plausible DC would be within a few hundred miles at most of the OTL chosen site.

To repeat then, why exactly is the current site less than optimal, given realistic constraints of the day? What's wrong with the site chosen? It's not like some other great urban center has risen in that region to show the way. Insofar as the belief and hope that DC would grow into a major commercial center as well as being the Federal capital was mistaken, the mistake was on a larger scale than this or that river mouth; the natural center would be New York or Buffalo, and those are too far north for the Southerners to accept; Ohio is too far west to work for at least a generation, and south of OTL DC is too far south and preempted by existing associated with established states.
 
Whenever these threads pop up I imagine living in the sleepy port town of Georgetown, and doing Saturday canoeing in the Anacostia National Bird & Wildlife Sanctuary. It feels so peaceful.

@Shevek23: Could an Appalachian location work? Something in what is now West Virginia or Pennslyvania? It would make sense to me to have the Capital in a protected mountain valley, easily defendable from encroachment by the superior British (or for that matter, French and Spanish) Navy.
 
I liked the western capital idea a lot in particular because of defense. Imagine the war of 1812, but the capital is in Ohio...instead of being vulnerable to the RN, it is now at risk of British-allied Indian raids. But if it is a pretty big city, those raiders are going to be stopped; the British have to ship an army over to Canada, to the Great lakes, then march down through US defenses to the capital which surely is defended.

But of course first a major city must be built in the middle of a wilderness! It could be done on the Chesapeake because highly developed sites on that system of waters could ship items up the bay to the site. In the west, though, everything is hauled in overland. A good spot is on a river system to be sure, but the portages are still very long grinds I would think.

I fear that going inland off of ocean-connected waters is too far west in the timeframe of the 1790s. Putting it in the mountains means permanent defense advantages but also permanent impediments to communication. Railroads and telegraphy transform the picture, but not in the time frame when the capital must be built.

Anyway I don't think the OP wants something so radical as moving it to the west for either defensive or foresight of a westward movement. They foresaw that, and knew about liabilities in terms of British forays by sea. But the same sea that makes the city vulnerable is the same transit possibility that potentially makes the city great.
 
Actually part of the original fort survived and has been excavated. The replica is a different living history site.
 
@Shevek23: Could an Appalachian location work? Something in what is now West Virginia or Pennsylvania?
They could have easily done Pennsylvania:
Amer0024_-_Flickr_-_NOAA_Photo_Library.jpg

Philadelphia_Montage_by_Jleon_0310.jpg
 
Philadelphia is absolutely the best site for the US capital if you don't want to build a new one. Other than that, you could pick another city in the PA/MD area. York, PA, Annapolis, MD, or even Baltimore, MD, could work.

If you wanna build a new capital, you might as well build it beyond the Appalachians, because any far-sighted politician could see that was where the growth would be. In which case, it would probably be somewhere in Kentucky or Ohio. Lexington, Louisville, or Cincinnati, maybe? Of course, they might as well be new cities if decreed to become the "District of Columbia" and the American capital. The American Indian was mostly ended in the immediate Old West after the 1790s and the Battle of Fallen Timbers, so this wouldn't be at immediate risk of Indian attack. Though I wouldn't put it on the Great Lakes for the same reason the capital of Canada (or at least Ontario) isn't Kingston--it would be too vulnerable to enemy attack.

Otherwise, just pick some site which OTL is a minor rural area/township/unimportant regional city and have it become the national capital.
 
Only if they built it on rafts. The river has meandered over the actual site, the Jamestown that one can visit today is a replica.

Perhaps if Zorqal would say why the precise spot chosen OTL is one he wants to avoid, we'd be better fixed to suggest other locations?

It sounds to me like the OTL site was intelligently chosen as far as having a central location goes. It is unfortunately below, rather than straddling, the Maxon-Dixon line which was pretty awkward during the Civil War, so I'd go with a more northerly site, say straddling the MD-PN border. But the farther north you go, the less conveniently the site is served by the Chesapeake Bay system.

Perhaps, as with Brasilia, the site should have been placed far into the west, to anticipate expansion of settlement and to draw it.

But before anyone conceived of railroads, this meant dooming the capital to be very difficult to access from any established settlements, slow communications, and a major effort digging canals or even making the sorts of crude roads that were expected in this day. It is not just that the site would be more distant from seashores and inland beyond the currently developed zone--it would be up in the foothills of the Appalachians, in inherently rough terrain.

Or they could have been very very bold and ambitious and set the new capital west of that range, on the eastern sheaf of rivers feeding into the Mississippi. I'm guessing such a Federal District would be in Ohio or Kentucky. And it would pose really severe communications problems for everyone, with westward settlement not really justifying it until the 1840s or so.

Actually, I believe DC as selected OTL was intended precisely to be a gateway to the west. Sea traffic could reach it, and thence upriver leads to passes to the Ohio country. As things turned out, New York state became the major gateway, and indeed NYC was the temporary capital while Washington city was being laid out. But it was too far north for Southern states to be content with it. The far northwest end of the Chesapeake was therefore it. This means that any plausible DC would be within a few hundred miles at most of the OTL chosen site.

To repeat then, why exactly is the current site less than optimal, given realistic constraints of the day? What's wrong with the site chosen? It's not like some other great urban center has risen in that region to show the way. Insofar as the belief and hope that DC would grow into a major commercial center as well as being the Federal capital was mistaken, the mistake was on a larger scale than this or that river mouth; the natural center would be New York or Buffalo, and those are too far north for the Southerners to accept; Ohio is too far west to work for at least a generation, and south of OTL DC is too far south and preempted by existing associated with established states.
Cincinnati or more preferably St. Louis, however at time of founding these are places that are quite remote and on the edge of the frontier, and or not even part of the united states at this point.

so if we go with Maryland being the opportune state of choice. I would say if not its current location than Hagerstown or Fredrick could be good choice areas, even Baltimore but that leaves the capitol open to direct attack by sea , not that that didn't stop the british in 1812 ;)

no of course hindsight 20/20 but in 1780's a civil war between north and south wasn't in the plans. So Richmond, Trenton. good old tired and true Philadelphia are great options
 
St. Louis (rename it Washington, DC, because forget the French and their Papist saints) is definitely the best choice of US capital, even now (let's imagine a hypothetical St. Louis with 150 years of being capital rather than actual OTL St. Louis)--it balances east and west appropriately. It's probably also not in position of being a good choice until the 1840s at earliest. Is the US capital going to be shifting until then? And even after St. Louis becomes capital, what's to stop, say, Independence or Kansas City from becoming capital instead? Well, maybe the Civil War, but still.

The best choice is somewhere beyond the Appalachians, but somewhere sane (not St. Louis, in the distant frontier) given this would be the first decade of the 1800s. As noted, that's probably somewhere on the Ohio River in Kentucky/Ohio. A far-sighted American nationalist might've seen the acquisition of the Mexican lands as not a matter of "if" but "when", but even then, the sane choice is still somewhere along the Ohio River. If you don't want to put the capital beyond the Appalachians, than Philadelphia might as well suit you unless you actually want to build Washington DC as in OTL. Considering how awful DC was in the early years, it's quite the testimony to the will to put the capital there.
 
I have seen maps showing travel times from a certain site as contours. I wonder if someone can find one of those for say Philadelphia, and then for a suitable point in Ohio or Kentucky--ideally a point on the border between them.

It seems doubtful you'd have that latter for 1790 at all. Maybe for Pittsburgh?

The point would be, that the times to get to the visionary western transAppalachian capital would be significantly longer, as in weeks, I would bet. And this is a day with no telecommunication whatsoever--time it takes a traveler to get there or back again is the time a message of any kind does.

Now west of the mountains, the times will actually be improved. But in the 1790s very few US citizens live there; what counts is the worsening of times for communicating with the established communities in the east.

It would be nice if someone can find some of these maps or other concrete documentation of the actual travel times required. Until someone does I just say yeah, the capital would be placed in the east to minimize communication times for people living there. It is a bit shortsighted but also realistic for the times.

Perhaps instead of planning a new District of Columbia ASAP, they should have planned for it to become the Capital in say 1810 or 1820, and thus ambitiously set it in th near west. And start developing a national road system with the surveyors having in mind the need for rapid communications with this point--the point being chosen in the end to facilitate that.
 
Why build a totally new city? Just take New York City as the capital of the US.
Too far north for the Southerners to accept. Which is why I said Philadelphia. It's on the border of 3 rivers, has a large metropolitan area with Camden just across the New Jersey border, is the 5th most populous city in the country, and close enough to the South that they won't make a huge hissy, but further North than Washington and out of harms way in any Civil War. It also has the prestige of being where the United States' Declaration of Independence was signed and where the First and Second Continental Congresses met, and was the US capital officially until 1800.
 
My main reason for wanting to find a new spot is nothing real, I just was seeing if there as an interesting place to put it. The POD is in 1784, so that's a while before the idea of DC is around, and there is no Washington, so I figured it wouldn't have to be where it was since a lot of that was for him.

If its in Philly, is it possible that they remove the city from Pennsylvania? One of the reasons it was in a district and not a state was that they didn't want to give any state all that power.
 
If its in Philly, is it possible that they remove the city from Pennsylvania? One of the reasons it was in a district and not a state was that they didn't want to give any state all that power.

Philadelphia was well-established as a city at that point, so I don't think they take the whole city. Instead they carve out a chunk of both Pennsylvania and New Jersey just outside what would have been the city limits at that time to build the *Capitol and *White House.

Bonus is that in addition to not disrupting Philadelphia this moves the government a little further (though not totally) from the threat of rioters.

EDIT: Should probably add that this period of history isn't my area of expertise, but IMO the solution I put in above helps resolve some of the problems which made the Founders apprehensive of keeping the capital city in Philadelphia.
 
Philadelphia was well-established as a city at that point, so I don't think they take the whole city. Instead they carve out a chunk of both Pennsylvania and New Jersey just outside what would have been the city limits at that time to build the *Capitol and *White House.

Bonus is that in addition to not disrupting Philadelphia this moves the government a little further (though not totally) from the threat of rioters.

EDIT: Should probably add that this period of history isn't my area of expertise, but IMO the solution I put in above helps resolve some of the problems which made the Founders apprehensive of keeping the capital city in Philadelphia.

So I'm thinking that maybe I stick with my original idea for taking over Wilmington from Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania to be the Federal District, while it's really just a suburb of Philadelphia.
 
Top