VA Tourist Attractions

This is the first landing site of those adventurous Englishmen who, some three weeks later, established the first permanent English Colony in North America at Jamestown.

From this same site some 174 years later, citizens of a soon to be free and independant United States of America watched as a British fleet commanded by Admiral Graves engaged the Frech fleet of Admiral Comte de Grasse in a sea battle know as the Battle of the Capes. This French naval victory sealed the fate of General Cornwallis at Yorktown leading to his surrender with one third of the British contingent in America and the eventural end of the American Revolutionary War.

Today this quarter acre of beach front is commemorated with waysides, a granite memorial cross, a statue of Admiral Comte de Grasse and a walkway ramp up the dunes to a magnificant view of where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Chesapeake Bay.

Today Cape Henry Memorial is located on Fort Story Military Reservation in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Be prepared to be stopped at the guarded entrance station.

These two sites represent the beginning and end of English colonial America. Situated on the Virginia Peninsula, these sites are connected by the 23 mile scenic Colonial Parkway. Colonial NHP also includes Green Spring, the 17th century plantation home of Virginia's colonial governor, Sir William Berkeley, and the Cape Henry Memorial, which marks the approximate site of the first landing of the Jamestown colonists in April of 1607.

Colonial NHP has a variety of natural resources including extensive wetlands, forest, fields, shorelines and streams, as well as rare, threatened and endangered plants and animals.

In 1934 the rest of the 1500 acres of Jamestown Island were acquired by the National Park Service as part of Colonial National Historical Park. Since that time the National Park Service and APVA have jointly administered Historic Jamestowne. Only the Church tower remains of the original Jamestown, but visitors can still walk the site of James Fort and James City proper.

Today, through the Jamestown Rediscovery Archaeological Project and the discovery of the remains of the 1607 James Fort, the APVA continues to shed new light onto the early story of Jamestown and its settlers. This ongoing archaeological project continues to delve more deeply into the strata of history exposing various features like fortifications, buildings, wells, and over 500,000 artifacts. Each new find tells a timeless story of struggle, endurance, disease, starvation, success and failure.

Visit Historic Jamestowne and step back into history by walking the same grounds as John Smith and Pocahontas. Visit the Memorial Church, which sits on the very site of the 1617 church. Walk the streets of James City and see the foundations of homes, taverns and industrial complexes. For it is from Jamestown that we as Americans can trace who and what we are as a people and as a nation. It is from here that the first permanent English settlement laid its roots in 1607. It is from here that the first representative legislative assembly in North America met in 1619. It is from here that three continents came together as Europeans encountered American Indians, and later brought enslaved Africans to this land. As the seat of Virginia government Jamestown became the focal point of Bacons rebellion in 1676. Come visit Americas birthplace!