Panorama Overlook stands at the north end of Cacapon Mountain's 30-mile march, where Oriskany sandstone drops nearly 1000 feet to the Potomac River as it bends below toward the Chesapeake Bay, with West Virginia on the near bank and Maryland farmland on the far side. Downstream, distant hazy mountains lie in Pennsylvania, while the jumbled mountains to the left mark the beginning of the Eastern Continental Divide. Along the West Virginia side of the Potomac is Great Cacapon, an area much of which was surveyed by a young George Washington; just downstream is the confluence of the wild and scenic Cacapon River, and farther upstream Washington owned prized riverfront acreage with virgin walnut trees. The landscape also brings together major strands of America's transportation history, with the C&O Canal on the Maryland side and the B&O Railroad on the West Virginia side, both begun on the same day in 1828. Higher on Cacapon Mountain, Prospect Rock, also called Cacapon Rock, offers the same view and was a favorite horseback daytrip from colonial times into the early 20th century. Washington often rode there, shaping his vision of a western route and his hopes for the Powtomack Navigation Company. The view has long drawn praise, being rated the 10th finest in the world by the Art Association, the 5th finest in the U.S. by the Museum of Natural History in New York, and called the "Switzerland View of America" by National Geographic; in 1796 Lawrence Augustine Washington called it one of the wildest, sublimest, and most interesting views of mountain country mixed with cultivated valleys and rivers that the nation afforded.
