This weekend, we went to visit where English settlement of North America began - Jamestown! The first thing we saw when we crossed the footbridge was this statue. It commemorates the founding of Jamestown in 1607.
We took a tour with a National Park Ranger who told all about the mystery of the Jamestown fort. When the English men arrived at Jamestown in 1607, they built a triangular shaped fort. Here is a model of it.
However, the site of the original fort was not well documented and historians thought it was located in one spot on Jamestown Island that is now covered with water from the James River. Then one archelogist had a theory that the fort was actually in a different spot and finally received permission to do some digging and on the first day of digging, he found the original fort site and it was not under water at all! This statue of John Smith is erected inside the walls of the original fort.
The park service has now built fences marking the location of the original fort walls. There are still archelogical digs ongoing at Jamestown and they have recovered thousands of artifacts from the original settlement.
Jamestown was also used as a fort during the Civil War. The confederates built dirtworks around the island so they could control traffic on the James River. We are posed in front of one of the Confederate mounds of dirt.
Jamestown was pretty interesting. There is also another Jamestown attraction called Jamestown Settlement that has recreated buildings and ships. We didn't visit there because we ran out of time.
We have some other historic places to show you, so stay tuned!
Kat