In the years before the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), jurisdiction of the region west of the Allegheny Mountains around Pittsburgh and along the Ohio River had been disputed between the British colonies of Virginia and Pennsylvania. The Mason-Dixon line, which officially established the border between Pennsylvania and Maryland, would have also settled the Virginia-Pennsylvania boundary dispute, but the surveying of the final miles of the Mason-Dixon line was abandoned in 1767 and would not be completed until 1784. In the early 1770s it was therefore unclear whether Pittsburgh and environs were in Pennsylvania or Virginia. Both colonies proceeded as if they had the better claim to the area. Virginia administered the region as the District of West Augusta, while in Pennsylvania it was considered a part of Westmoreland County.