Historic Jamestowne

Historic Jamestowne is where permanent English America began. Founded in 1607 on a marshy island in the James River, Jamestown was the first lasting English settlement in North America — the fragile foothold from which colonial America would grow. It was here that English settlers endured starvation and war with the Powhatan, that tobacco became the cash crop that saved the colony, that the first representative assembly in English America met, and that the first enslaved Africans were brought to the English colonies, all in the fateful years around 1619.

In May 1607, about 100 English colonists sent by the Virginia Company of London landed on a low island in the James River and built a triangular palisade they called James Fort, naming the settlement for King James I. The site was defensible but unhealthy, ringed by brackish water and mosquitoes, and the early years were desperate. Disease, poor planning, and conflict with the surrounding Powhatan Confederacy brought the colony repeatedly to the brink of failure.

The winter of 1609-1610, remembered as the 'Starving Time,' nearly ended it: the population collapsed from several hundred to about sixty. The colony survived through the leadership of figures like Captain John Smith, an uneasy relationship with the Powhatan — including the famous story of Pocahontas — and above all the introduction of tobacco cultivation by John Rolfe around 1612, which finally gave Virginia a profitable export.

The years around 1619 proved historic: Jamestown hosted the first representative legislative assembly in English America, and the first enslaved Africans in the English colonies were brought to Virginia. Jamestown served as the capital of Virginia until 1699, when the seat of government moved to Williamsburg and the town faded. Today the original site is preserved as Historic Jamestowne, where the Jamestown Rediscovery project has unearthed the remains of the 1607 fort long thought lost to the river.