Hampton Roads comprises the eastern end of the Lower Peninsula, including Williamsburg, Jamestown Island, Yorktown, Newport News, and Hampton and the counties of James River and Yorktown. The area is bounded by the James River on the south, the York River on the north, Chesapeake...
The double genesis of Williamsburg is a long-told tale. First, in 1699 Virginians abandoned the small, unhealthy old capital on marshy Jamestown Island to build a better-planned urban capital on the low ridge between the James and York rivers, a town that would be the scene of...
The English established a settlement along what is now Hampton (originally Southampton) River in 1610; the General Assembly designated it a port in 1708. Its strategic location required the construction of several forts, of which Fort Monroe is the most significant survivor. After...
Located on the south side of Hampton Roads, bordering the Chesapeake Bay and the Elizabeth River, Norfolk is at the center of Virginia's principal port area and is home to the world's largest naval operation. The area was settled in the early seventeenth century, but not until 1680 was...
Ghent, the city's most fashionable streetcar suburb at the turn of the twentieth century, takes its name from a local farm, itself named for the Treaty of Ghent, the agreement that ended the War of 1812. The oldest section of the neighborhood dates from the 1890s, when Philadelphia...
Colonel William Crawford founded Portsmouth in 1752 through the subdivision of his land on the south side of the Elizabeth River across from Norfolk. The village was platted on a regular grid with High Street as its principal east-west axis. It developed as a seaport, and the U.S....
The Commonwealth's largest city (2000 population, 425,257), Virginia Beach was formed in 1963 from the merger of the then smaller city of Virginia Beach with the surrounding county of Princess Anne. What had been a summer resort strip along the Atlantic Ocean with farmland to the...
The area south of the James River, sometimes called the Southern Tidewater, includes the cities of Chesapeake and Suffolk and the counties of Isle of Wight, Southampton, Surry, and Prince George. The cities of Chesapeake and Suffolk are really municipal counties covering...
Located at the junction of the Appomattox and James rivers, Hopewell dates from 1613, when it was established as Bermuda City. In 1622 a colony-wide attack by Native Americans wiped out the settlement. The town was reestablished in the 1630s but grew very slowly into the...
The Eastern Shore has since the mid-seventeenth century comprised two counties: Accomack County, the northernmost, named for the Native American tribe that originally inhabited the area, and Northampton County, named for the English shire. Patterns of development in the area can...
Virginia is as much a state of mind as a set of geographical boundaries. Its western terrain encompasses dramatically beautiful mountaintops and scrubby lowlands, luxuriantly rich terrain, and rocky, almost untillable land. The green forests, rich loam, red...
There is a legend that the “Knights of the Golden Horseshoe,” an expeditionary force sent out by Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood in 1716, was composed of the first European Americans to discover the Valley of Virginia. Like many legends it is not true. German immigrant John...
Located at the northernmost point of Virginia, Frederick County was chartered in 1738 by the Colonial Assembly of Virginia and named in honor of Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales, son of King George II. A large county, measuring 435 square miles, Frederick County's topography varies...
Located at the northern end of the Valley, Winchester is the oldest town west of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the seat of Frederick County. Local surveyor James Wood platted the town in 1744, but it was not officially established by an act of the...
Chartered in 1758 by Lewis Stephens, this is the second-oldest town in the Valley after Winchester. Its location at the intersection of the Valley Pike (U.S. 11) and the Old Dutch Wagon Road (VA 277), once a major road linking Alexandria to the Cumberland Gap in...
Middletown was chartered on May 4, 1796, by Peter Senseney, a German-born physician who came to this area from Pennsylvania. Although he resided in Winchester, he owned a large tract of land in this area that included a small community known as Senseney Town. Because of...
Inadvertently misspelled, Clarke County was named for George Rogers Clark, a Revolutionary War hero who led the campaign against the British in the Northwest Territory. Clarke County was carved from Frederick County in 1836. One of the few traces of Native American habitation can be...
Located at the intersection of two important colonial roads, the Winchester-Alexandria Road (now VA 7) and the Charles Town-Old Chapel Road (now U.S. 340), the community was first called Battletown. The town took its present name when it was officially chartered in 1798...
This small village was established in the late eighteenth century around the Burwell-Morgan Mill (CL13) and later became a settlement for freed blacks. The village provides a remarkably unaltered view of a small rural...
Warren County is bordered by the Blue Ridge Mountains to the east and Massanutten Mountain to the west. Although the forests of Shenandoah National Park and George Washington National Forest cover much of the county, most of the parkland is characterized by rolling plains to the north...
Front Royal was chartered in 1788 on land that belonged to French immigrant Peter LeHew. The derivation of the town's name has never been satisfactorily explained. Because “front” derives from the French word meaning “frontier,” the town's name perhaps draws from the...
Shenandoah County is bordered by Massanutten Mountain to the east and the Allegheny Mountains to the west. The North Fork of the Shenandoah River hugs the base of Massanutten Mountain and, winding like a serpent the entire length of the county, its loops and bends provide unspoiled...
Founded in 1761 by German and English settlers, Woodstock was the first town to be established in what later became Shenandoah County. Like most Valley towns of the period, it has a gridiron plan and its principal street (now Main Street) is the Great Wagon Road, which...
Once a thriving agricultural community, Fishers Hill is now a quiet village. The oldest building is the two-story brick Keller House (c. 1830; 2900 Battlefield Road). West of the house is Keller Mill (c. 1870), a large stone and frame gristmill with a gambrel roof...
The second-oldest town in Shenandoah County (Woodstock was the first), Strasburg was established in March 1761 by act of the Virginia House of Burgesses. Its streets are lined with several early log and stone houses as well as many late-nineteenth-century frame and brick buildings....
Edinburg was settled by 1825 and initially was known as Shryrock after the family that owned a large tract of land upon which the town was built. According to Martin's Gazetteer of Virginia, by 1835 the town had a population of 130. Stony Creek provided power to...
Laid out in 1826 as Mount Pleasant, the linear village on the banks of Mill Creek was soon renamed Mount Jackson after President Andrew Jackson. The Valley Turnpike and the Manassas Gap Railroad gave access to distant markets for the area's livestock, fruit, and grain...
Established in 1796, New Market resembles a turnpike town more than any other of the county's towns. Congress Street (U.S. 11) is the town's broad straight thoroughfare lined with closely spaced mostly nineteenth-century buildings on small lots. In 1806 German-speaking...
Bounded on the east by the Blue Ridge Mountains and on the west by Massanutten Mountain, Page County is divided by the meandering South Fork of the Shenandoah River that flows north the thirty-mile length of the county. The deep soils of the river's adjoining bottomlands were used by...
The town of Shenandoah lies on the South Fork of the Shenandoah River at the Page and Rockingham county line. Developed around the Shenandoah Iron Works in the 1830s, the town was officially incorporated as Milnes in 1884, after William Milnes, owner of the ironworks, who was...
