Home › States & Territories › Federal District
Washington, D.C.
The federal capital district of the United States
Washington, D.C. - the District of Columbia - is the capital of the United States and the only part of the country that lies within no state at all. Created by the Constitution as a federal district under the direct authority of Congress, it was carved from land ceded by Maryland along the Potomac River and laid out in the 1790s by Pierre L'Enfant as a planned city of grand diagonal avenues and monumental vistas.
Home to the White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court, and the great museums of the Smithsonian along the National Mall, the District is the seat of all three branches of the federal government. Its nearly 690,000 residents - more than the populations of Wyoming or Vermont - have no voting representation in the Senate and only a non-voting delegate in the House, a status that fuels a long-running statehood movement and the protest slogan on its license plates, "End Taxation Without Representation."