Transportation
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The George Washington Memorial Parkway opened in 1932 as the nation’s first modern federal highway, built to honor the bicentennial of George Washington’s birth as a patriotic pilgrimage between Washington, DC, and Mount Vernon. Following the Potomac River, it links travelers with more than twenty national park units, many connected to Washington himself. Washington saw the Potomac as a route for transportation, expansion, and progress in the new nation, and the parkway continues that vision through travel by car, foot, bike, or boat. Along its route are places including Great Falls Park, which helped inspire Washington’s efforts to build a canal to reach the American West and influenced his work on the U.S. Constitution; Jones Point Park, which preserves the first boundary marker for the District of Columbia, surveyed in 1791 by Benjamin Banneker; Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial, home of Martha Washington’s grandson and originally a memorial to the first president; and Theodore Roosevelt Island, reached by the Mount Vernon Trail.
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Mount Vernon, Virginia · United States
