Virginia’s Historic Triangle of Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown is an energetic, living classroom considered America’s birthplace. Visit, and learn all about where the United States became a democracy.
Over the next school holiday, explore this genteel corner of Virginia on a history-themed family road trip. Plan at least four days for your trip with older children. Mix these remarkable historic sites with fun theme parks, golf, watersports and meals craft breweries to keep things light.
Plan a History Immersion at America’s Birthplace
Begin your visit chronologically, at Jamestown Settlement. Explore the interactive museum with a recreation fort, Indian village and three reproduction English trading ships. Archeologists discovered the site of the 1607-era English fort and settlement nearby in the 1990s.
Spend a day exploring Colonial Williamsburg. The 300-acre village recreates life during the years it was the capital of the Virginia Colony (1699- 1780). Picture horse-drawn carriages on a 23-mile-long protected forest corridor known as the Colonial Parkway. This is the pivotal road that connects these sites to Yorktown Battlefield in the Colonial National Historical Park. Williamsburg is the most convenient base for family lodging with many hotel and resort options for every budget.
Explore the birth of a democracy at the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown. The climactic battle of the Revolutionary War in 1781 is illustrated by a recreation Continental Army encampment and colonial farm.
Here’s a video and some lessons we took home from our visit to the region.
American History is Fun
“If Jamestown represents the arrival of the English, then Yorktown represents kicking them out,” laughs Englishman Peter Armstrong, formerly with the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation. At their sites, interpreters or costumed reenactors bring pivotal events in history to life. Technology, multi media displays, newly discovered artifacts, and dramatic vignettes make learning fun.
Commerce is at the Heart of Democracy
America’s birthplace story begins at Jamestown Settlement. Discover why desperate men risked the unknown New World for promises of land and riches. The first English colony was sponsored by The Virginia Company of London, which sold stock to English “adventurers.” Within a year, nearly two-thirds of the original 104 men and boys had perished. Remember 17th-century challenges included extreme weather, drought and starvation. More colonists were recruited. Over time, the new cash crop of tobacco and the establishment of slavery kept Jamestown alive.
Women are Essential to a New Country
When the English landed, sophisticated Powhatan Indians welcomed them as traders, not settlers, to the James River region. After years of fighting, the colonists kidnapped the Powhatan princess Pocahontas. Eventually, her marriage to captor John Rolfe brought peace. Learn why the real Pocahontas was more cultural ambassador than Disney princess. Get to know the women, both free and enslaved, whose wits and work established the state of Virginia as America’s birthplace.
Innovation Breeds Growth
Over a plate of Chesapeake Bay oysters at Yorktown’s Riverwalk Restaurant, remind the family to look down as they explore the sites. Colonial towns and military encampments were lined with crushed oyster and clamshells. This innovative flooring provided good drainage and a calcium-rich fertilizer for the soil in the new country.
America’s Birthplace Spawns Seeds of Democratic Representation
At Jamestown Settlement, watch the stirring “A Nation Takes Root” film. It sets up the culture clash between local Indians, arriving English colonists, and the Angolans who worked as indentured servants. Compare each culture’s tradition of government with a new touchscreen game and engage with individual characters on life-size monitors. In June of 1619, the same year the Africans arrived, a provincial legislative assembly convened. It was chosen by the colonists as the first representative government in British America.
Every Citizen has a Civic Duty
Pause for a hot chocolate at the prosperous Charlton Coffeehouse, one of the 500 historic buildings (many original) in Colonial Williamsburg. Join re-enactors in questioning British authority over the colony. By 1776, Williamsburg was a melting pot of ideas and customs, whose citizens would play a prominent role in the development of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. These documents became the cornerstone of democracy after the country’s tumultuous birth.
The High Price of Freedom for New Americans
Follow five people whose true stories were uncovered by scholars. Their tales are shared in the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown’s award-winning, introductory film “Liberty Fever.” Mobile app museum guides cater to every interest. Download a tour and further explore the lives of loyalists, patriots, women or children who made American history.
American Society Relies on Public Health
Disease was the greatest risk for both armies and residents. That’s why young Patriots will have their teeth inspected at the recreation Continental Army encampment. Kids are sure to keep smiling until they examine the jagged 18th century dental tools and unhygienic conditions in the reproduction Surgical Tent outside the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown.
War is Hell
The American Revolution Museum’s experiential 4-D theater surrounds visitors with images, smoke, wind, and the smell of war. However, it’s dynamic National Park Service rangers at the Yorktown battlefield who bring the horrors of war home. Relive the trials and heroism of General George Washington, his aide Alexander Hamilton, the Marquis de Lafayette and his slave, James Lafayette. The Patriots’ extraordinary defeat of British General Lord Cornwallis is why people say this nation was truly born at Yorktown.
United We Stand at America’s Birthplace
The Puritans who fled to Plymouth in 1620 for religious freedom were united by religion. However, the first residents of the Historic Triangle — what would become the U.S. — had little in common. Yet, a stroll along Duke of Gloucester Street in Colonial Williamsburg shows they achieved a better life together. Yorktown explains how the powerful ideal of freedom inspired colonists, Indians, and slaves to fight together as Patriots against England. In 1799, after years of Revolutionary War and dissent over the shape of the new country’s Constitution and Bill of Rights, Patrick Henry reminded all Americans, “United we stand, divided we fall. Let us not split into factions which must destroy that union.”
At America’s Birthplace We Learn Every Vote Counts
Jamestown, Williamsburg and Yorktown provide an exciting and thought-provoking introduction to the revolutionary ideals behind America’s system of democracy.
What do the region’s historians and educators want visitors to take away from their visit to Virginia’s Historic Triangle? All agree on one thing: the importance of voting.
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