all can long, we showcase the history of madison, wisconsin. we continue now with our look at the history of madison. this is american history tv on c-span 3. the personality of madison is a fascinating thing to study. historians look at cities the same way that biographers look at people. so, when i looked at madison i wanted to know what are the salient qualities of the city.

in order to do that, you have to study the whole sweep of the city, and you have to learn what the essence of the city is and how it developed and why. process, i came to some interesting conclusions and they begin with some key facts. for example, madison's leaders have always thought of themselves as living in a very special place. a place that requires tight, top regulations to control the quality of the environment. and because it is special, many leaders have been quite visionary in the way they have viewed the city. so, those kinds of qualities lead to certain personality characteristics. very specialis a place. the second quality is that we have to do a number of things to keep madison special. and the third element is getting active. madison has more organizations

then you can imagine. they come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. so the activism stems from the fact that madison is special and requires a lot of work and effort from citizens to keep it that way. 36 andn was founded in 18 1837. there is about a two-year period where the territory legislature picked madison to be the capital. the location of the capital turned out to be very important for the future of the city. it was located in the southern part of the state, where the richest farmland was located. later, this became the area where we had railroads coming in from all directions. what those things meant is that madison could be an agricultural city, a place for you could manufacture all kinds of agricultural implements. we could have all kinds of commerce here.

so, those are some of the factors that shaped what madison became in the future. the third factor is very important, and that is the natural beauty of the city. people typically come here and they say, my god. what a beautiful place this is. to keepefore, they try it that way. that is the third quality that was instrumental in shaping the city we wenjoy. the location was important because it was located in exactly halfway between lake michigan and the mississippi river. when you try to locate the capital out of unorganized land, center was very important. that was a key factor locating the city, and the reason why the legislator picked this location. madison is a very rare city on an isthmus.

it is a relatively narrow -- wa ist surrounded by lakes. very few cities have this distinction. the man who laid out madison had d.c., manygton, times. one of his goals was to try to copy the street design that he saw in washington, d.c., here. so he did. by that, all of the streets came together and focus on a public building, such as the capitol. that was the key idea. the fact that madison was laid out on it is miss -- isthmus surrounded by two lakes had implications for the future. visitors from east, people who wanted to settle here, said, my goodness, this is beautiful. because it is beautiful, we have to keep it special. as i study the sweep of madison 's history, that single perception probably played a larger role in the history of

the city than any other. we wanted to not only build on the beauty, the natural beauty of madison with the buildings, the human products we create. so there is no question in my mind that the natural beauty placed a high standard on the human construction. and that has been a theme. the relationship between the city and the university is fascinating. the concept of having a university here in madison occurred very early, in 1837. 848 thatas not until the university had any money and was able to get started and was able to start building buildings. in university of wisconsin, fact, was very small during almost all of the 19th century. it was only in the late 1890's that it be can to grow rapidly.

point forward, it continued to grow rapidly throughout most of the 20th century. so when the university suddenly got into this big growth spurt in the 1890's and through the teens, business leaders said this is an economic engine. this is the way to grow madison. that was a fascinating revelation for business leaders, because they had not thought of the university as economic development. most interesting stories was the history of the progressive movement. to a large extent, it was about a relationship between president -- charles van hyes, and the governor with the state. they decided to have something that was called a saturday lunch club. they and their aids would get together. the goal was to try to find ways

that the university could help the state. one of the most interesting ways this occurred -- and it was later called the wisconsin idea, hat people in t wisconsin are very proud of. i will give you a quick example. it was sewage. one of the biggest problems all cities in north america had was how to get rid of sewage. so here we are in madison. we had some lakes. the idea is we will put the sewage in the lakes. that had terrible consequences for the quality of the lakes. but the reason he was, my goodness, paris puts all of its sewage in the river. why can't we do this? lakes, there is no downstream. it did not work out. this was a huge problem. it was a problem for every city. however, at the university of wisconsin, we have professors who specialized in sewage treatment.

and they were able to offer their expertise to the city of madison at no charge that caused madison to have one of the most sophisticated sewage treatment systems in north america. and that is an example of this wonderful relationship that occurred between the university of wisconsin and madison. story that has statewide significance. it helps farmers and agricultural sophistication and the list goes on and on all under the wisconsin idea. madison had many ways to grow. it could be a city of business, it already was a home of the university of wisconsin. it was the capital of the state. therefore, it's legislative center. one of the real questions about madison was what shall it become? one of them was to be a very wonderful northern resort where

people would come here in the summertime from places like st. louis an new orleansd and enjoy the beautiful lakes and the cool weather. that was one option. another option was we could also have factories here. and that was a fight starter question. if you wanted to get discussion going in madison, then you throughout the idea of turning madison into a factory city. this was one of the very few places in the country where that particular feature was vehemently rejected because most leaders at that time, the 19th, early 20th century, felt very strongly that it was very important to keep madison beautiful. this did not mean that they would not be interested in business. they wanted business, but they wanted something they called high grade factories. people who would come here with skills,, working fancy machines. almost high-tech in today's terminology.

and that was a huge debate that 60timately settled only after years of discussion. and the resolution was madison a university town, i capital of the state, and also will be a place where very specific types of high grade, high technology factories would be accepted. interestingly, when the first business organization started in 1913, one of the things they wanted to do was to attract factories. but 24 factory said we want to come to madison. only two were selected by the business leaders to come, because they were the right kind of factory. the factories that are -- our civic leaders thought were ones that required great skill, manufacturing is one example. the reason they wanted people

with these kinds of skills was because they would get paid more money. houses, and they would send their kids to the university of wisconsin. that was not the image that many people had of the so-called grimy worker who worked in steel mills and that type of industry. the formative years in madison set a pattern that is evident even today. and that pattern was, look, we have got a very special place here. we need to keep it special. run all through madison history. it is caused a very interesting phenomena. for people, civic leaders, who have come to the fore at key junctures of history, to say, look, we need to take a road less travel. we need higher standards. we need visionary ideas.