It’s where English colonization of America began—and where it effectively ended. It’s where representative government in America was first established and where the Revolutionary War reached its climax. All this history unfolded within a single 20-mile stretch of Virginia’s Tidewater region.
From England’s first permanent North American settlement at Jamestown to the colonial capital of Williamsburg to the American Revolution’s decisive battleground at Yorktown, America’s Historic Triangle witnessed seminal moments in how the United States was founded, governed and ultimately born.
English Colonization of America Starts at Jamestown
Following an arduous five-month journey from London, some 100 men and boys disembarked on a marshy peninsula 50 miles up the James River on May 14, 1607, and began the Jamestown colony.
“Jamestown represents the beginning of American society as it exists today,” says Jamestown Settlement senior curator Beverly Straube. “It is the site of England’s first successful transatlantic settlement that established English social, political and economic norms in what grew to become the United States of America.”
Members of the Virginia Company of London, the settlers came in search of silver, gold and a waterborne trade route to the Orient. Within months, however, they shifted from dreaming of riches to praying for survival. By the end of 1607, all but 38 had died from hunger, disease and attacks by the Indigenous Powhatan people. Supply ships brought additional settlers, but after a 1609 hurricane blew a convoy off course, the ensuing harsh winter and Powhatan siege led to “The Starving Time” in which settlers survived by eating dogs, shoe leather and, evidence suggests, even each other.
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