Image
Washington's Grist Mill in Perryopolis.
Credit: Copyright 2005, David E. Illig. Used by permission. www.perryopolis.com
George Washington believed that America's future lay in the West. By the end of the American Revolution, he owned nearly 60,000 acres in western Pennsylvania and what would become West Virginia. "If I was a young man, just preparing to begin the world," he wrote one friend, "I know of no country where I would rather find my habitation than in some part of that region." This gristmill was constructed on one of Washington's Pennsylvania properties in 1776. He would not visit it until his trip west in 1784.