Qualla: Virginia Beach, Virginia

Virginia Beach, Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Doctorg, CC BY-SA 4.0. After 144 days at sea, on April 26, 1607, Captain Christopher Newport's three small ships made landfall at a low sandy cape where the Chesapeake Bay meets the Atlantic. The colonists named the place Cape Henry for the eldest son of King James I, planted a cross, and sailed on to find a better-defended spot upriver. They built Jamestown. But the first English boot to touch what would become Virginia did so here, on the dune line of a future resort city. Four centuries later that same sand is still drawing people ashore: 2.75 million tourists a year, Virginia's largest population by city, the Guinness Book's longest pleasure beach in the world. Most of them have no idea their footprints are on the same patch of coast.

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Image: Doctorg | CC BY-SA 4.0

Virginia Beach, Virginia: Princess Anne

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The Chesepian people lived here when Newport arrived, part of the loose Powhatan Confederacy. Their settlements had been destroyed by the Powhatan themselves shortly before Jamestown was founded. The colonial county that emerged in 1691, Princess Anne, would survive for 272 years...

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Image: Public domain

Virginia Beach, Virginia: The Resort

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jason Pratt (FishSpeaker), CC BY 2.0. Tourism arrived by rail in 1883, when the Norfolk and Virginia Beach Railroad reached the oceanfront. The Virginia Beach Hotel opened the same year. In 1891 its guests stood on the porch and watched the Norwegian barque Dictator break apart in a March storm; the rescue and the ei...

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Image: Jason Pratt (FishSpeaker) | CC BY 2.0

Virginia Beach, Virginia: Consolidation

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cowpie21, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1963, the voters of the tiny independent City of Virginia Beach and the large surrounding Princess Anne County voted to merge. The combined entity kept the better-known beach name and inherited a 253-square-mile county-sized footprint stretching from the Atlantic dune line all...

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Image: Cowpie21 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Virginia Beach, Virginia: The Land Crunch

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mojo Hand (talk · contribs) (formerly Kubigula), CC BY-SA 3.0. Virginia Beach has run out of room. The Green Line, an urban growth boundary dividing the developed northern half of the city from the rural southern half, was meant to preserve farmland and limit the strain on roads and schools. It mostly worked. But the pressure to keep buildin...

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Image: Mojo Hand (talk · contribs) (formerly Kubigula) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Virginia Beach, Virginia: The Beach

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rlevse, CC BY-SA 3.0. On a clear July morning the boardwalk runs three miles from Rudee Inlet to 42nd Street: bicycles, joggers, lifeguards in trucks, the East Coast Surfing Championships every August, the Yuengling Shamrock Marathon every March, fishermen on the pier, the Norwegian Lady looking eastw...

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Image: Rlevse | CC BY-SA 3.0