Why US State Capitols have been placed/moved where they are

Indianapolis, Indiana

When Indiana became a state in 1816, the capital was in Corydon in the extreme south of the state. Corydon was the capital of the Indiana Territory which at times included modern day Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and parts of Michigan and Minnesota. Corydon is a few miles north across the Ohio River from the state of Kentucky where most of the settlers were located.

Effective January 1, 1825, the seat of state government relocated to Indianapolis from Corydon. The city of Indianapolis was established not by settlers but by proclamation when Indiana was granted statehood in 1816. The United States Congress set aside four square miles of public land (10.36 km2, or 1036 ha) for the site of the capital of the Union's nineteenth state. In January 1820, the Indiana legislature picked 10 commissioners and charged them with the mandate to locate the new capital as near as possible to the center of the state. In June 1820, the commissioners selected for the capital a location that was close to the exact center of the state.

Four sq. mi. were allotted for the city, but the chief surveyor, E. P. Fordham, plotted an area of only one sq mi because it seemed inconceivable that the capital would ever be any larger. Today, with 853,173 million inhabitants, Indianapolis covers 372 sq mi (960 km2), making it the 16th largest city by land area in the U.S.

Alexander Ralston, who previously had helped plot the US capital, Washington, and the District of Columbia, was hired to design the future city. He decided to model it on the nation's capital, with four broad avenues branching out diagonally to the north, south, east and west from a central circle.

Cheers

/r/history Thread