After four and a half months crossing storm swept seas 144 weary Englishmen made land-fall in April 1607. They anchored their ships in the protected waters of the bay and landed a small party upon the shore. They built a wooden cross and planted it in the sand naming the place Cape Henry. This is the first landing site of those adventurous Englishmen who, some three weeks later, established the first permanent English Colony in North America at Jamestown. Today this quarter acre of beach front is commemorated with waysides, a granite memorial cross, a statue of Admiral Comte de Grasse and a walkway ramp up the dunes to a magnificant view of where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Chesapeake Bay. Today Cape Henry Memorial is located on Fort Story Military Reservation in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Colonial National Historical Park (NHP) administers two of the most historically significant sites in English North America. Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America in 1607, is administered jointly with the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, and Yorktown Battlefield, the final major battle of the American Revolutionary War in 1781. These two sites represent the beginning and end of English colonial America. Situated on the Virginia Peninsula, these sites are connected by the 23 mile scenic Colonial Parkway. Colonial NHP also includes Green Spring, the 17th century plantation home of Virginia's colonial governor, Sir William Berkeley, and the Cape Henry Memorial, which marks the approximate site of the first landing of the Jamestown colonists in April of 1607. Colonial NHP has a variety of natural resources including extensive wetlands, forest, fields, shorelines and streams, as well as rare, threatened and endangered plants and animals.

Claude Moore Colonial Farm in McLean is a living history site that demonstrates the life of a poor farm family living on a small farm in northern Virginia just prior to the American Revolutionary War. Today, agricultural and household activities seen on the Farm represent an earlier era when small farms were dispersed throughout the countryside; and, most Americans engaged in activities of an agricultural nature.

Jamestown National Historical is a part of Historic Jamestowne, site of the First Permanent English Colony in North America. The National Historic Site consists of 22.5 acres on the western end of Jamestown Island, which includes the original site of the 1607 fort and statehouse site of the late 17th century. Visit Historic Jamestowne and step back into history by walking the same grounds as John Smith and Pocahontas. Visit the Memorial Church, which sits on the very site of the 1617 church. Walk the streets of James City and see the foundations of homes, taverns and industrial complexes. It is from here that the first permanent English settlement laid its roots in 1607. It is from here that the first representative legislative assembly in North America met in 1619. It is from here that three continents came together as Europeans encountered American Indians, and later brought enslaved Africans to this land. As the seat of Virginia government Jamestown became the focal point of Bacon’s rebellion in 1676.

Yorktown Battlefield is the site of the final, major battle of the American Revolutionary War and symbolic end of Colonial English America.