George Washington’s Venango to Fort Le Boeuf Route, December 1753—Reexamined

Current beliefs about the route George Washington and Christopher Gist took in 1753 from Fort Machault at Venango—where they delivered an ultimatum to a French garrison to evacuate British territory—to Fort Le Boeuf are erroneous. They are based on secondhand testimony, whereas Washington’s own map traces the most direct and plausible route based on the ease of using existing Indian trails and paths already established by the French military. A careful examination of the area, as outlined in this article, shows it to be the only sensible way he would have traversed this difficult terrain.