NOVA Parks News

On July 5, 2025, NOVA Parks and local leaders celebrated Independence Day with the unveiling of two new permanent interpretive signs at Seneca Regional Park (01 Seneca Road, Great Falls VA 22066) that tell the powerful story of George Washington’s Patowmack Canal. This early engineering feat helped tie the young Mid-Atlantic states to the western territories, ultimately leading to the creation of the U.S. Constitution.

During the 1700s, the few roads that headed west were little more than dirt tracks, which became impassable in the winter and rainy seasons. George Washington was familiar with the land from surveying Lord Fairfax’s lands as a teen and later as an officer during the French and Indian War. He envisioned the Patowmack River, now spelled Potomac River, as the gateway to the west, connecting the Alexandria and Georgetown ports with rivers in Pennsylvania and eventually the Ohio River.

To make his vision a reality, Washington needed cooperation between states and agreement on currency for tolls. Meetings took place in 1784-1785, but were unproductive. As a next step, all thirteen states were invited to meet in Annapolis, and then again in 1787 in Philadelphia. That meeting became known as the Constitutional Convention, to which George Washington and James Madison brought a draft of what became the United States Constitution. Representatives from all thirteen states attended and the process began of creating the document to define the principles on which the United States was founded.