George Washington spent much of his life at Mount Vernon, his beloved estate in Virginia overlooking the Potomac River, but that is not where life began for America’s first president. He was born on February 22, 1732, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) to the south in Westmoreland County, in a brick house along Popes Creek.
Though mid-February is typically chilly in Westmoreland County, signs of spring had started to emerge across the swampy, rolling lands held by the family when Washington was born. The birth, according to a brief note in the Washington family Bible, occurred around 10 a.m. on a day when the jasmine and jonquils had begun to bloom.
The OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 8 captured this scene of the lands west of Popes Creek—now the site of the George Washington Birthplace National Monument—on January 19, 2026. While the home where Washington was born sat just a few hundred feet from Popes Creek, lands owned by the Washington family extended northwest toward Mattox Creek. The family’s burial ground lies in the center of the image along Bridges Creek, where dozens of relatives are interred, including Washington’s parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents on his father’s side.
Washington’s time at Popes Creek was brief, and the historical record detailing his time there is limited. What is known, however, is that before his parents moved the family to Mount Vernon, he spent his first three-and-a-half years living on farmland in an area first settled by his great-great-grandfather in 1657. Archaeological evidence indicates that …