Madison, Mississippi, United States

🇺🇸 Madison is the eleventh-largest city in Mississippi, located in Madison County, 13 miles north of the state capital, Jackson. It is part of the Jackson Metropolitan Statistical Area.

History The city of Madison, named for James Madison, the fourth President of the United States, developed along a bustling railroad track in antebellum Mississippi. It began in 1856 when the Illinois Central Railroad opened Madison Station, the forerunner of the city of Madison.

The nearby town of Madisonville was a settlement along the stagecoach route on the Natchez Trace. It was the first county seat of Madison County in 1828, and had a race track, two banks, a wagon factory, and at least one hotel. Its residents gradually moved to the new railroad community, and old Madisonville became defunct.

Like many railroad towns in the South, Madison Station was heavily damaged by the Union Army during the Civil War. Ten miles from the state capital of Jackson, Madison Station was largely destroyed in 1863 after the July 18–22 siege of Jackson. No battles were fought in Madison County, but Major General Stephen D. Lee concentrated his command in Madison Station during the month of February 1864. Stephen Lee was later appointed as the first president of Mississippi State College (now Mississippi State University).

The railroad continued to attract growth after the Civil War. In 1897, the Madison Land Company encouraged northerners to "Go South, and grow up with the country". Located in Chicago, the land company's interest in development prompted Madison to incorporate as a village, though the charter was lost when regular elections were not held because of the failure of the "land boom".

The Madison Land Company offered prime land for as little as $3.00 an acre. It claimed that Mississippi had the lowest debt ratio in the United States at $19.00 per capita and that Mississippians were one-third healthier by "official figures" than people in New York and Massachusetts. The figures were quoted in the Madison Land Company's brochure by Bishop Hugh Miller Thompson, the second Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Mississippi and a Madison resident, who originally came from Wisconsin.

After many years of court battles, the city annexed other territory to expand its limits in size in the late 2000s.

Geography According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 13.7 square miles (35 km²), of which 13.5 square miles (35 km²) is land and 0.2 square miles (0.52 km²) (1.61%) is water.

Recreation • Strawberry Patch Park, one mile running trail, playground, and children's fishing pond • Liberty Park, sports fields and playgrounds • Simmons Arboretum, wooded trail

Education The City of Madison is served by the Madison County School District. The Student/TeacherRatio is 19:1.

Madison-Ridgeland Academy is a 6A private high school and member of the MSAIS located in Madison.

St. Joseph Catholic School is a parochial school located in Madison that serves the Jackson Area; it is of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Jackson.

In 2010, Tulane University opened a satellite campus of its School of Continuing Studies. The campus was housed in a renovated wing of the former Madison Station Elementary School (Madison Ridgeland High School) campus until it closed in 2017.Jackson State University has also opened a satellite campus in the city.

Transport There is one small airport in the city, Bruce Campbell Field.

Points of interest • Simmons Arboretum • Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce South Central U.S. (est. 1997) • Chapel of the Cross in nearby Mannsdale is listed on the National Register of Historic Places