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250-Year-Old Cherries Found at George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate.
Archaeologists found something incredibly rare in the cellar of George Washington’s home at Mount Vernon: Two intact jars of cherries buried in the basement of the first U.S. president’s house.
The story of a young George Washington chopping down a cherry tree may be a myth, but the first U.S. president did likely dine on cherries at Mount Vernon, as evidenced by a recent discovery. Archeologists came upon two intact bottles of cherries that had been buried beneath a brick floor at the Virginia estate.
Principal archaeologist Jason Boroughs called the preserved fruit an “extraordinary” find. “They’re plump, they have flesh, they have pits and stems,” he told USA Today. “They don’t look as if they’ve been sitting in a bottle for 250 years, although they have.”
According to a press release from Mount Vernon, the liquid still even smelled of cherry blossoms. The European-manufactured jugs were likely produced in the mid-18th century and ended up buried when the brick floor was laid in the 1770s.
