Lord Fairfax, a landowner with vast property holdings in the Virginia Northern Neck area, gave Washington his first surveying job. George set out with two of Lord Fairfax’s experienced surveyors on a month-long trip across the Blue Ridge Mountains in early 1748 with as little as three practice surveys to his credit. Part of the land they surveyed would become the city of Winchester, later chartered in 1752. This journey served as Washington’s initiation into the field of surveying and led him to pursue it as a career. Washington developed a lifelong friendship with the powerful and influential Fairfax family that allowed him upward mobility through Virginia society. In a way, surveying gave Washington the connections he needed to later become president of the United States! Washington was able to generate a successful surveying career before later becoming involved in the military and politics. Between 1747 and 1799 Washington surveyed over two hundred tracts of land and held title to more than 65,000 acres in 37 different locations Marshall, Fauquier Co, town was surveyed and platted by John Mauzy in 1797 Culpeper County, chartered in 1749, was named for Lord Thomas Culpeper, Colonial Governor of Virginia. That year, at the age of 17, George Washington was commissioned to survey and plot the Town and the County of Culpeper. The Town of Culpeper was chartered in 1759 by an Act of the General Assembly as the Town of Fairfax and it was recorded that the Town occupied a "high and pleasant situation In Rappahannock in July 1749, a 17-year old George Washington noted in his journal, "in the Blue Ridge Mountains …I laid off a town." The young surveyor, assisted by two chainmen, laid out the Town of Washington in the same five-block by two-block grid that exists today. The town was officially established by the Virginia Assembly in 1796. Though there are now 28 Washingtons in the United States, this is "The First Washington of All." Today Washington serves as the county seat, is home to the famous Inn at Little Washington, as well as country inns, shops, and galleries. Other historic small towns include Woodville (1803), Amissville (1810), Sperryville (1820), and Flint Hill (1820s), each with its own charm and heritage. At the northern edge of the county, is Chester Gap. Washington is a town in Rappahannock County, Virginia. It is noted for being the oldest of the 28 towns and villages by the name of Washington in the United States of America. The site of this town was surveyed by George Washington himself in July of 1749. Its population was just 183 people at the 2000 census. It is also the county seat of Rappahannock County[3]. It is nicknamed Little Washington because of its proximity to Washington, D.C., which lies only 70 miles east In Thoroughfare Gap beside Interstate 66, stand, half hidden in the trees, the ruins of a huge mill that was producing flour when George Washington surveyed in the area. Twice burned and repaired during the Civil War, it operated until Harry Truman was President, and only recently burned for a third time ============================================= Abraham Lincoln is remembered for many things—president, statesman, lawyer—even his career as a railsplitter is fairly well-known. He is least remembered for surveying. But survey he did, and he left behind much evidence in the form of signed plats, maps and the towns he helped lay out.