USA Guide
The Capital Region
Virginia
Virginia is the oldest American colony and had arguably the most direct influence on the early development of the United States. Its recorded history famously began at Jamestown, just off Chesapeake Bay, with the establishment in 1607 of the first successful British colony in North America. Though the first colonists hoped to find gold, it was tobacco that made their fortunes. To grow and harvest tobacco required both an immense amount of land and labour – so Native Americans were driven off their land and slaves were imported from Africa. Many of them wealthy planters, Virginians had an enormous impact on the foundation of the United States: George Mason, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and four of the first five US presidents were from Virginia. Later, as the confrontation between North and South over slavery and related issues grew more divisive, Virginia was caught in the middle, but joined the Confederacy when the Civil War broke out, providing the Confederate capital, Richmond, and its military leader, Robert E. Lee. Four long years later, Virginia was ravaged, its towns and cities wrecked, its farmlands ruined, and most of its youth dead.
Richmond itself was largely destroyed in the war; today it's a small city with some good museums, the best ones historical in nature. The bulk of the colonial sites are concentrated just east, in what is known as the Historic Triangle, where Jamestown, the original colony, Williamsburg, the restored colonial capital, and Yorktown, site of the final battle of the Revolutionary War, lie within half an hour's drive of each other on the Colonial Parkway. Another historic center, Charlottesville – famously home to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello – sits at the foot of the gorgeous Blue Ridge Mountains, an hour west of Richmond. Northern Virginia, often visited as a day-trip from Washington DC, features several posh suburbs, a number of restored historic homes, the antique architecture of Alexandria, and Manassas, the scene of two important Civil War battles.
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