George Washington's Headquarters

One-room log cabin used by the young George Washington.

A small log cabin in Riverside Park, opposite the bus station, is the only surviving structure from Fort Cumberland — the colonial-era frontier post around which the town grew. The cabin served as Washington's office and quarters during his military service here in 1755-58, when the area was the western edge of the British Empire in North America.

Washington's Headquarters is small (it is genuinely just one room), free, and best combined with the C&O Canal Western Terminus a couple of blocks away. There is a state historical marker and a few interpretive panels. Open mid-May to mid-October, daytime hours.

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Washington was 22 years old, a Virginia militia colonel, when he used this cabin during the disastrous Braddock Expedition of 1755 — the campaign whose failure helped trigger the wider French and Indian War. Forty years later, as President, he returned to Cumberland with troops during the Whiskey Rebellion.

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