Mount Vernon

Mount Vernon was the home of George Washington — commander of the Continental Army and the first President of the United States. Overlooking the Potomac River in Virginia, the estate was the center of Washington's life for forty-five years and the place he returned to after leading the Revolution and the young nation.

Today the mansion and grounds are preserved both as a memorial to Washington and as a candid record of 18th-century plantation life — including the more than 300 enslaved people whose labor sustained the estate. It is cared for by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, the oldest historic-preservation organization in the country.

The property on Little Hunting Creek passed to George Washington's half-brother Lawrence, who renamed it Mount Vernon in 1743 after a British admiral he had served under. George Washington took up residence in 1754 and came to own the estate outright in 1761.

Over two decades Washington transformed a modest farmhouse into a 21-room Georgian mansion, adding a cupola and the riverfront piazza, and expanded the estate to roughly 8,000 acres across five farms. Mount Vernon was a working plantation run on the labor of enslaved men, women, and children, who numbered more than 300 by 1799.

Washington died at Mount Vernon on December 14, 1799, and he and Martha Washington are entombed on the grounds. After years of decline, the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association — founded by Ann Pamela Cunningham — acquired the estate and opened it to the public in 1860, helping to launch the American historic-preservation movement.