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Historic Jamestowne is the cultural heritage site that was the location of the 1607 James Fort and the later 17th century city of Jamestown. It is located on the James River at Jamestown, Virginia and operated as a partnership between Preservation Virginia (formerly known as the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities) and the U.S. National Park Service. It is adjacent and complementary with Jamestown Settlement, a living history museum built run by the Commonwealth of Virginia to interpret the early colony. Jamestown, first established in May 1607, was the site of the first permanent English settlement in North America. Jamestown was the capital of the Virginia Colony, and saw Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, when the statehouse was burned. After a second burning in 1698, the capital was relocated to higher ground at Middle Plantation in 1699, which was then renamed Williamsburg. By the middle of the 18th century, the land was cultivated mainly by the Travis and Ambler families. During the American Revolutionary War the area was used as a military post where American and British prisoners of war were exchanged. In the 19th century, Jamestown Island reverted to little-used farmland, and in 1862 became the site of Doller's Point Battery, a Confederate earthworks during the American Civil War intended to protect Richmond against Union gunboats. Swann's Point Battery was a Union Army battery located Swann's Point above the mouth of Gray's Creek on the James River, opposite Jamestown Island from 1862-1865. The Ambler Farm was burned by escaped slaves, who found the desolate island to be a haven. The area then reverted to farmland until preservation efforts began at the end of the 19th century. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historic_Jamestowne en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_...
Historic Jamestowne is the cultural heritage site that was the location of the 1607 James Fort and the later 17th century city of Jamestown. It is located on the James River at Jamestown, Virginia and operated as a partnership between Preservation Virginia (formerly known as the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities) and the U.S. National Park Service. It is adjacent and complementary with Jamestown Settlement, a living history museum built run by the Commonwealth of Virginia to interpret the early colony. Jamestown, first established in May 1607, was the site of the first permanent English settlement in North America. Jamestown was the capital of the Virginia Colony, and saw Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, when the statehouse was burned. After a second burning in 1698, the capital was relocated to higher ground at Middle Plantation in 1699, which was then renamed Williamsburg. By the middle of the 18th century, the land was cultivated mainly by the Travis and Ambler families. During the American Revolutionary War the area was used as a military post where American and British prisoners of war were exchanged. In the 19th century, Jamestown Island reverted to little-used farmland, and in 1862 became the site of Doller's Point Battery, a Confederate earthworks during the American Civil War intended to protect Richmond against Union gunboats. Swann's Point Battery was a Union Army battery located Swann's Point above the mouth of Gray's Creek on the James River, opposite Jamestown Island from 1862-1865. The Ambler Farm was burned by escaped slaves, who found the desolate island to be a haven. The area then reverted to farmland until preservation efforts began at the end of the 19th century. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historic_Jamestowne en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_...

Historic Jamestown

historic-sitescolonial-historyarchaeologyvirginianational-parks
4 min read

For most of the twentieth century, historians were certain the original James Fort was gone, eaten by the James River's relentless erosion of Jamestown Island's western shore. Visitors gazed at the water and imagined the foundations somewhere beneath the current. Then in 1994, archaeologist William Kelso began digging. By 1996, he had found it -- the fort's footprint largely intact, with only a single western bulwark lost to the river. That discovery transformed Historic Jamestown from a pleasant but vaguely disappointing pilgrimage site into one of the most active and revelatory archaeological digs in North America. The soil here has yielded armor fragments, surgical instruments, the bones of colonists who starved, and evidence of the desperate cannibalism that marked the winter of 1609-1610. This is where America's origin story lives -- not polished and comfortable, but muddy, complicated, and still being excavated.

Where the Ships Landed

On May 13, 1607, roughly one hundred English colonists chose this marshy island in the James River for their settlement. The Virginia Company had instructed them to find a defensible site, and the island delivered: deep water along the shore for anchoring ships, good visibility up and down the river, and enough distance from the coast to avoid Spanish attack. The colonists built a triangular wooden fort -- James Fort -- and within it a church, a storehouse, and crude shelters. What followed was catastrophe. Between 1609 and 1611, the 'Starving Time' killed all but sixty of roughly five hundred colonists. Disease, contaminated water, and conflict with the Powhatan Confederacy made Jamestown a deathtrap. Yet it survived, became the capital of the Virginia Colony, and remained so until Bacon's Rebellion burned it in 1676. A rebuild followed, but another fire in 1698 finally pushed the capital to higher ground at Middle Plantation, renamed Williamsburg. Jamestown faded into farmland.

Lost and Found

Preservation efforts began in the 1890s when Mr. and Mrs. Edward Barney donated land on Jamestown Island -- including the seventeenth-century church tower -- to what is now Preservation Virginia. A sea wall was built in 1900 to halt the erosion that had already consumed the western shoreline. The church was rebuilt in 1907 by the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America, incorporating the surviving old tower. In 1934, Colonial National Historical Park took stewardship of the remaining island, partnering with Preservation Virginia. But the fort remained elusive. Then came Kelso's Jamestown Rediscovery project in 1994, a ten-year archaeological initiative that found what everyone had given up on. The excavation has continued for three decades, yielding more than two million artifacts. In 2015, researchers identified the remains of four men buried in the chancel of the church -- among them likely the colony's first Anglican minister, Robert Hunt.

Monuments and Memory

The island is layered with commemorations from different eras, each reflecting its own understanding of what Jamestown means. The Tercentenary Monument, erected in 1907 for the 300th anniversary, rises from New Hampshire granite and resembles a miniature Washington Monument. Its inscription declares Jamestown 'the birthplace of Virginia and of the United States.' A bronze John Smith statue, unveiled in 1909, stands twenty feet tall on a granite base inscribed with his motto: 'vincere est vivere' -- to live is to conquer. The Pocahontas statue, first placed south of the church in 1922, has been moved multiple times as archaeological work expanded -- a fitting metaphor for how her story keeps shifting under new evidence. The Hunt Shrine, designed by Ralph Adams Cram, was erected in 1922 to honor the colony's first minister and was rotated in 1960 to face the river. A wooden cross near the Archaearium museum marks the earliest known English burial ground in America.

Digging Into the Truth

The Voorhees Archaearium, opened in May 2006 ahead of the 400th anniversary celebrations, houses artifacts unearthed from the James Fort site in a 7,500-square-foot gallery built directly over the excavated remains of Jamestown's last statehouse. The museum integrates the daily life and death of colonists through objects they touched: armor, tools, ceramics, and human remains. Queen Elizabeth II visited in 2007 for the 400th anniversary -- her second trip, having first come for the 350th in 1957. She noted that Jamestown was 'the beginning, not just of America, but of the British Empire.' The dig continues today under Preservation Virginia, with each season revealing new details about the colonists' diet, health, relationships with the Powhatan people, and the grim realities of survival in seventeenth-century Virginia. Historic Jamestown is not a finished exhibit. It is an active excavation, and the story it tells changes with every shovelful of earth.

From the Air

Located at 37.210°N, 76.779°W on Jamestown Island in the James River, southeastern Virginia. From altitude, the island appears as a peninsula connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus. The Colonial Parkway links it to Williamsburg and Yorktown. Look for the church tower and monument rising from the tree line along the river's edge. Williamsburg-Jamestown Airport (KJGG) is approximately 8 nm northeast. Newport News/Williamsburg International (KPHF) is about 20 nm east-southeast. Best viewed at 2,000-3,000 ft AGL. The wide James River and adjacent marshlands provide strong visual reference.

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