The Washington family's Potomac River plantation developed from land acquired in the seventeenth century. Augustine Washington built a modest house there in 1734, and his son Lawrence later named the estate Mount Vernon after British admiral Edward Vernon. George Washington began leasing the property from Lawrence's widow in 1754 and gained full ownership in 1761. He enlarged the house in stages, first raising it to two stories and later adding the north and south wings, piazza, cupola, and carefully composed service spaces.

Mount Vernon was both a family residence and the center of a large plantation system. Washington shifted production from tobacco toward wheat, milling, fishing, distilling, and other enterprises, presenting himself as an innovative farmer. That diversification depended on the coerced labor of enslaved people who worked as field hands, artisans, cooks, domestic servants, watermen, and skilled tradespeople across several farms. Some were owned by Washington, while others formed part of the Custis estate controlled through Martha Washington's first marriage.

Washington left Mount Vernon in 1775 to command the Continental Army and returned only briefly during the war, stopping on the journey to Yorktown in 1781. Estate managers and Martha Washington oversaw operations during his absence. After the Revolution he hosted political figures and visitors while helping shape the new federal government. His election as president took him away again from 1789 to 1797, although Mount Vernon remained his private home and an important setting for correspondence, agricultural planning, and national politics.

Washington retired to Mount Vernon after the presidency and died there in December 1799. His will ordered the freedom of the people he personally enslaved after Martha's death; she freed them in 1801, but people held through the Custis estate remained enslaved and families were divided. Washington was reinterred in a new family tomb in 1831. Successive heirs struggled to maintain the property as soils, buildings, finances, and the river landing declined, while growing numbers of visitors treated the estate as a national shrine.

The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased the mansion and about 200 acres from John Augustine Washington III in 1858, creating one of the United States' earliest national preservation organizations. The association protected the estate through the Civil War and gradually acquired furnishings, restored buildings, reconstructed lost dependencies, and expanded the landscape. Modern archaeology and documentary research have corrected earlier romantic presentations, especially by recovering the lives of the enslaved community. The nonprofit association still owns and operates Mount Vernon as a museum, memorial, research site, and working historic landscape.