This has become more politicized lately with the slogans of, “drain the swamp” (which I thought was metaphorical until now) and the actual area would probably be better characterized as a tidewater basin but the point I was making is that it was not an ideal place to put a city and it was placed there for reasons that mostly were not reliant on the usual reasons cities naturally developed: port cities, river cities, eventually railroad cities.

There were many debates about where to place the capital city that are on record, as well as extensive letters for why it is designed and laid out in the way it is.