Seven generations lived here before the famous one was born

George Washington Birthplace National Monument is in the **Northern Neck of
Virginia**. It covers 551 acres where **seven generations of the Washington
family lived**, and where George Washington was born in 1732.

The family came first and stayed longest. A birthplace is usually read as the
beginning of one person's story; here it is the middle of a family's.

A monument about memorialising

The park was also **central to one of the earliest efforts to memorialise
George Washington**, during the celebration of his bicentennial in 1932.

So the site has two subjects: the eighteenth-century family, and the
twentieth-century impulse to commemorate them. What was built in 1932 is now
itself historic, which makes this a place to think about how a country decides
to remember someone two hundred years later.

Getting there

The birthplace is **two miles from Virginia State Highway 3, on Virginia State
Route 204**:

• 38 miles east of Fredericksburg
• 11 miles west of Montross
• 10 miles west of Colonial Beach

When to come

Summers are very warm and humid; winters are cold and dry. **Spring
and autumn are the best seasons to visit** — the park says so itself, which is
worth taking at face value for an outdoor site of 551 acres.

Location: National Monument, Virginia. Source: U.S. National Park Service.