Colonial National Historical Park is a large national historical park located in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia operated by the National Park Service. It protects and interprets several sites relating to the Colony of Virginia and the history of the United States more broadly. These range from the site of the first English settlement at Jamestown, to the battlefields of Yorktown where the British Army was defeated in the American Revolutionary War. Over 3 million people visit the park each year. The Moore House is where surrender negotiations took place in 1781, located in the eastern part of the park.
Nearby are the state-operated American Revolution Museum at Yorktown and the Yorktown Riverwalk Landing area.
Green Spring Plantation
William Berkeley held the colonial governorship during the longest periods of any individual. He used his Green Spring Plantation as an experimental farm to develop sources of income for the colony other than cultivated tobacco and traded furs.
Cape Henry Memorial
The Cape Henry Memorial is at the site of the landing of Captain Christopher Newport and the Jamestown colonists in 1607. It is located in the city of Virginia Beach, Virginia at Cape Henry. It open to the public and is located off U.S. Route 60 on the Navy's Joint Expeditionary Base East.
Administrative history
Colonial National Monument was authorized on July 3, 1930. It was established on December 30, 1930. On June 5, 1936, it was redesignated a National Historical Park. The cemetery at Yorktown was transferred from the War Department to the National Park Service on August 10, 1933.
Jamestown National Historic Site is co-owned by the National Park Service and Preservation Virginia (formerly known as the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities) and administered by the NPS, and was designated on December 18, 1940. Preservation Virginia owns containing the remains of the original 1607 fort. The National Park Service owns the remaining of the island which contains the archeological remains of the expanded town and its island plantation sites.
As with all historical areas administered by the National Park Service, Colonial National Historical Park and Jamestown National Historic Site are listed on the National Register of Historic Places of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
See also
- Island Drive, a historic road within the park.