There’s a Lot Less to Jamestown and a Lot More

The biggest surprise is that there is no town at Jamestown, the first “permanent” English settlement in North America.

Little physical evidence remains of what once was a small but bustling seaport that served as Virginia’s first capital for 92 years. It had substantial brick houses, a large church and several statehouses.

Some visitors may be disappointed, especially if they go to Jamestown after spending a day or two at the nearby restored Colonial-era community of Williamsburg.

Still, Jamestown is worth a visit. It is always fascinating to explore a famous place you have only known from history books.

Some people consider Jamestown sacred soil, said Diane Stallings, Jamestown site supervisor. “People come here for pilgrimages,” she said. “The Protestant faith in America was established here.” Others are interested in history, their English heritage or the start of American political institutions.

Jamestown has two major attractions: Jamestown Island, a 1,500-acre unit of Colonial National Historical Park, and Jamestown Settlement, a large outdoor museum operated by the state’s Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation.

Some might think too much has been left to the imagination on Jamestown Island. They might wish at least a small part of the town would be restored (it would be older than Williamsburg). “We can never rebuild it, because we don’t know what it looked like,” said Stallings. She said people who realize they are coming to a symbolic place are not disappointed.

Some of Jamestown Island’s early history is brought back to life at the adjoining Jamestown Settlement. It has full-scale replicas showing what James Fort, three sailing ships and an Indian village might have looked like.

To enjoy both places thoroughly, first-time visitors should plan to spend at least four hours at Jamestown. If you get hungry, bring a picnic lunch or stop in at one of the many restaurants in Williamsburg, less than 10 miles away.

Jamestown’s environment was harsh 383 years ago, with mosquitoes, bad water, starvation, diseases, rebellions, fires and Indians massacring hundreds at a time. But now the island is a quiet national park, beautifully situated at the edge of the wide James River.

The only original 17th-Century structure still standing is the partially crumbled brick church tower. When completed after 1647 it was 46 feet tall, 10 feet taller than it is today. The ruin, open to the sky, has a high-arched entrance and walls three feet thick. It is attached to a memorial church, built in 1907 on the site of Jamestown’s first brick church. Foundations of the original church and the tomb of an English knight are visible under glass in the memorial church floor.

Jamestown has no Plymouth Rock. The place where the settlers first came ashore in 1607 is under water now. Part of the town site and the site of the original James Fort also are in the James River. The island was much larger in 1607. Because of erosion, its original shoreline is 100 yards offshore.

Although Jamestown probably is less famous than Plymouth, Englishmen landed here 13 years before the people we call Pilgrims started their colony in Massachusetts. Plymouth may be better remembered because the Pilgrims came to the New World for religious freedom. But half the Mayflower’s passengers were fortune hunters, much like the men who hoped to find silver and gold around Jamestown.

Jamestown was not the first town in the United States. Not counting native American cliff-dwellings in the Southwest, that distinction belongs to St. Augustine, Fla., founded by the Spanish in 1565.

England felt it had a patriotic duty to challenge Spain’s foothold in the New World. In May, 1607, 144 Englishmen arrived at what would become Jamestown on three ships, the Susan Constant, the smaller Godspeed and the tiny Discovery. One hundred four men and boys would stay to establish the colony.

It had been nearly 20 years since the failure of an earlier English attempt to colonize North America. In 1585 a colony had been established on Roanoke Island, N.C. But by 1590 all those colonists, including women and children, had disappeared. History remembers it as “the lost colony.”

Jamestown nearly suffered a similar fate. Six months after arriving in Virginia nearly half the first colonists had died of disease and starvation. More ships came, but in 1609-10, 450 of the 500 inhabitants died in what is called the “Starving Time.”

A large memorial cross stands over a shallow mass grave, hastily dug during the Starving Time. It contains 300 bodies. The cross is dedicated “to those early settlers, the founders of this nation, who died at Jamestown during the first perilous years.”

But not all those settlers were honorable. In one documented incident during the Starving Time, a man murdered his wife, cut her up, salted her down and ate her. He was caught and executed.

In 1676 a reformer and Indian fighter named Nathaniel Bacon led 500 men in rebellion against the town, burning it to the ground. He died of natural causes just five weeks later.

The first representative government in the New World was established in Jamestown in 1619, a year before the Pilgrims’ Mayflower Compact, which often is cited as the first agreement for self-government in America. The island’s most prominent landmark is a 103-foot obelisk, which looks like a miniature Washington Monument. It was erected in 1907 to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the settlement. On its base are the words: “Representative government in America began in the first house of burgesses assembled here, July 30, 1619.”

Facing the river on the island is a robust statue of Capt. John Smith, who took command of Jamestown briefly in 1608. The swashbuckler was a world traveler, soldier, adventurer and author who brought order to the new colony. Some historians consider Smith Jamestown’s savior. Nearby is a statue of Pocahontas, an Indian maiden who saved Smith’s life.

Most settlers who came to 17th-Century Jamestown were indentured servants. The first African blacks came as indentured servants in 1619. Like whites, they were set free upon completion of their terms. Slavery was not legalized in the colony until the late 1600s.

Virginia became England’s oldest, richest and largest colony in the New World and Jamestown was its capital. But after 1699, when the capital moved inland to Williamsburg, Jamestown declined and eventually was abandoned. A courthouse remained until 1718, the church until the 1750s and a ferry landing until 1956, when it was moved half a mile upstream. Car ferries, linking nearby Virginia 31 across the James River, still pass near the island.

One of the island’s most popular attractions is the replica Glass-house between the park’s entrance station and the visitor center. Visitors can observe 17th-Century-style glass-blowing and buy reproduction pieces. Most are green, caused by iron oxide in the sand used to make the glass.

In a nearby pavilion are furnace remains of the 1608 Glasshouse. Glass making, according to a sign, was America’s first industry. Jamestown’s first glass factory only operated for several months. Samples were sent to England but a market did not develop and the venture was not successful. A few years later, trading in tobacco was found to be much more profitable.

The visitor center has a 15-minute orientation film and museum exhibits, including a model of James Fort. Tapes for walking and driving tours can be rented there.

East of the visitor center whitened 20th-Century bricks cover foundations of 17th-Century houses. This is the “New Towne” section of Jamestown, developed after 1620.

Not everything on Jamestown Island focuses on the 17th Century. A monument marks the spot where in September, 1781 the first French troops arrived in Virginia to join George Washington’s army for the Yorktown campaign. Remains of Confederate defensive earthworks, built in 1861, are visible.

And the brick ruin of the Jacquelin-Ambler mansion, a plantation house built in 1710, is the only above-ground structure still standing in “New Towne.” The house was burned by the British in 1781 and by Union troops in 1862. It burned for the last time, accidentally, in 1895.

Visitors can get some idea how the Virginia wilderness looked to the first English settlers by taking a three-mile or five-mile island driving tour. One is likely to see deer on or near the one-lane macadam road that goes through pine forests and over plank bridges spanning Pitch and Tar Swamp. Roadside signs and paintings show settlers’ activities such as wine making. One sign tells the story of a boy who skipped out of church and was killed by Indians. Visitors also can take a short walk to Black Point at the east tip of the island.

Jamestown Settlement, formerly called Jamestown Festival Park, is outside the entrance to Jamestown Island. It has full-size reproductions of James Fort, the three ships that brought the first Englishmen to Jamestown and a Powhatan Indian village. In each area costumed interpreters explain early 17th-Century life and encourage visitors to take part in activities.

Jamestown Festival Park opened in 1957 to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown. It was supposed to be a temporary facility, but was so popular that it remained open. In recent years the tourist attraction has evolved into a more historically accurate educational facility.

“The historical accuracy of the Indian village is above reproach,” said Michael Taylor, curator of archeological collections at Jamestown Settlement. “I can say the same thing about the fort. Our fort is getting to be one of the best presentations of 17th-Century English life in America that is in this country.”

A new indoor museum opened at Jamestown Settlement this spring. The $5-million facility has expanded the museum’s permanent exhibits by offering galleries about 17th-Century England, native Americans who lived in Virginia and the lives of colonists.

The sites of two significant events in American history are separated by less than 15 miles, as the sea gull flies, and by 174 years. The first, Jamestown, marks the beginning of the British empire in North America. The second, Yorktown, marks the beginning of the end of British dominance on this continent. Together they help us better understand who we are and how we got here.