Convinced that settlements were essential to controlling land, Virginia promoted western expansion by offering speculators a thousand acres for every family they could place west of the Allegheny Mountains.

Andrew Lewis, a young surveyor, mapped 50,000 acres in the Greenbrier Valley for a land company owned by his father and other wealthy Virginia planters.

Explorer Christopher Gist claimed 200,000 acres for the Ohio Company, which promised to settle 100 families in the Ohio Valley and build a fort for their protection.

Virginia's greatest landowner, Lord Fairfax, hired an ambitious 17 year old to survey his western lands. After three years, George Washington knew Western Virginia as well as anyone and was determined to own some of it himself.