The Threshold of a New Nation

On December 19, 1606, a fleet of three small sailing vessels, the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery, under Capt. Christopher Newport and carrying 104 men, left London, England, to rediscover for England the land of Virginia and the Lost Colony of Sir Walter Raleigh. After a four-month Atlantic crossing and a violent storm that blew them north of their intended landing place, they sighted land at the present-day coastline of Virginia Beach in the early morning of April 26, 1607. George Percy was among the first landing party of 30 men to go ashore, and for the next four days the expedition explored the surrounding area and claimed the land in the name of God and England. Returning to the place of their first landing, they named it Cape Henry after Prince Henry, the 13-year-old Prince of Wales and eldest son of King James I, then planted a rude wooden cross atop a high sand dune before moving inland because the area was considered too open for settlement and vulnerable to attack by Spain. On May 13, 1607, the expedition established Jamestown on a small island in a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay named the James River, creating the first permanent English settlement in the New World, which survived early hardships and served as the capital of the Virginia Colony for more than 100 years. Cape Henry later became an important navigational site: plans for a signal there were discussed as early as 1627, and in 1791 the Cape Henry Lighthouse, authorized by the first United States Congress and signed off by President George Washington, was built as the oldest structure of its type in the U.S. The 72-foot lighthouse with 191 steps remained in use for 88 years before structural problems led to its replacement. A granite memorial cross erected in 1935 marks the first landing site at Cape Henry, and a new lighthouse, built 327 feet to the southeast and put into operation in 1881, rose 163 feet and cast a beacon almost 20 miles to sea. Cape Henry also had a weather station, with a 1901 building that replaced an 1874 structure, housed the Weather Bureau operation for 44 years before it was torn down in 1953.

Virginia Beach, Virginia · United States