The Cabin Faced West

The Cabin Faced West is a historical novel for children by the American writer Jean Fritz, first published in 1958. It is set in 1784 on Hamilton Hill in Washington County, Pennsylvania, about twenty miles south of Pittsburgh near the Monongahela River.

Ann Hamilton's family has moved from Gettysburg to what was then called the western country, across the Alleghenies, and the novel follows the first months on their new land. Ann is ten, she misses her friends and the town, and the work of a frontier farm does not make up for either: there are trees to clear, a baby to help with, and neighbours so far off that a visit is an event. The cabin's door was hung facing west, which she takes as a sign of how far the family has come from everything she knew. The stranger who arrives at the house is George Washington, travelling in the district, and his visit gives Ann a reason to see her own home differently.

Fritz wrote historical books for children for several decades, and this one is built on the account of Ann Hamilton, whose family was related to hers by marriage.