Natives, Explorers, Tobacco and Buccaneers

In 1600 this tidewater land was part of a vast American Indian empire ruled by the Powhatan nation. English mariner and mapmaker Robert Tyndall found a narrow entrance to the York River in 1608 while exploring the new Virginia Colony with John Smith and Christopher Newport, and he sent a map back to England calling these narrows “Tendales fronte.” John Smith changed the name to “Tendales Poynt” when he printed his Chesapeake map in 1624. The strategic point soon drew interest as tobacco plantations spread through the area and the colonial government built a tobacco warehouse there for local planters shipping crops to England. The first fort was erected there during a 1667 invasion scare involving the Dutch, and as Gloucester became an established town in 1680, maritime wars continued with the Dutch, Spanish, and French. By 1711 the fort had ten-foot-high dirt walls faced with brick and fifteen cannon. Pirates also terrorized shipping, and two were hanged there in 1719. Over time the defenses were neglected and often in poor condition. For more than 250 years the point went through several names: Robert Tyndall named it in 1608, the English later named the first fort for King James II, Union forces in the 1860s called their camp and fort there Gilpin and Keyes, and by the late 1800s Gloucester Point finally took the name shared by the county and town, which honored Henry, Duke of Gloucester, the third son of King Charles I.

Gloucester Point, Virginia · United States