Jamestown

We visited the Jamestown Settlement (top left), not the historic site

A few weeks ago, we took a short trip to see "America's historical triangle": Jamestown, Yorktown, and Williamsburg. We did the first two on our first day; this post recounts Jamestown.

On May 14th 1607, at a spot about a mile from where you are standing now, a group of 104 colonists disembarked from three small sailing ships to establish the first permanent English settlement in North America. This settlement, called Jamestown, is where the United States of America really began.

So reads a sign at the Jamestown Settlement museum, where we began our adventure. The museum is small but nice; the real attractions, though, are outdoors: the recreation of a Native American community, the James Fort replica, and two sailing ship replicas, one of which you can board.

Throughout the Fort, there are reenactors who describe various facets of daily life in the seventeenth century.

Note that the real settlement is about a mile away; we didn't visit, as we had heard there wasn't much there. (The capital of Virginia moved to Williamsburg, ten miles away, in 1699, and Jamestown declined rapidly thereafter, eventually reverting to agricultural fields.)

Jamestown is a nice hour or two; I can't see spending much more than that. Then, it was off to Yorktown (tomorrow's post).