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Plan of the city of Washington in the territory of Columbia, ceded by the states of Virginia and Maryland to the United States of America, and by them established as the seat of their government, after the year MDCC

This 1792 map was among the first printed plans of Washington, D.C., the new seat of government for the federal government. Its location on the Potomac River was determined as a result of the Compromise of 1790. Thomas Jefferson and his supporters agreed that the nation would take on state debts incurred during the Revolutionary War in exchange for the mid-Atlantic capital site selected by George Washington. Though Maryland surveyor Andrew Ellicott created this map, he based it on designs by French engineer Pierre L'Enfant.