On the flats of the east side of Connoquenessing Creek, one hundred rods east of this spot, Major George Washington, then a youth twenty-one years of age, narrowly escaped death on the evening of December 27th, 1753, when a hostile Indian fired at him from less than fifteen steps away as he and Christopher Gist were returning to Virginia from Washington's visit to Saint Pierre, commandant of the French forts Le Boeuf (Waterford) and Venango (Franklin). Washington had gone as agent of Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia to deliver Dinwiddie's protest against French encroachments on territory claimed by the English. Washington and Gist were traveling the Venango Indian Trail, which crossed the highway at this spot and ran in an almost north-south line from the forks of the Ohio (Pittsburgh) to Venango (Franklin), making it one of the most important Indian trails.