Blueprints for the nation’s beginnings

By Patti Nickell
November 21, 2018

Perhaps no two locations have more significance in America’s early development than Jamestown and Yorktown in Virginia, and no organization has done a better job at keeping that legacy alive than the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation.

Living history displays at Jamestown and the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown are ideally suited to groups of all sizes, ages and interests. Thanks to an array of unique artifacts and the costumed interpreters who are on hand to answer questions, visitors get a fascinating peek into the American colonies of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Groups can experience the beginning and end of Colonial America in just one day, starting with a two-and-a-half hour guided tour of Jamestown Settlement in the morning, followed by a two-hour guided tour at Yorktown’s American Revolution Museum in the afternoon. In between, groups of up to 50 can arrange for a private lunch at Jamestown Settlement Café.

Visitors to the area from November 2018 through January 2020 will get a bonus with a special exhibition at Jamestown Settlement, “TENACITY: Women in Jamestown and Early Virginia.”

Through captivating personal stories, you will get a sense of the tenacious spirit that allowed these women to endure countless hardships in the colony.

This special exhibition features artifacts, images and interactive displays—some seen in the U.S. for the first time—to tell their riveting stories. The artifacts, which range from a 17th-century Ducking Chair, a form of punishment usually reserved for women, to an elaborately carved court cupboard, are on loan from prestigious museums, including London’s Victoria & Albert and the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

For more on the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, email Joan Heikens or visit historyisfun.org.

Top photo: The “TENACITY: Women in Jamestown and Early Virginia” exhibit will be on display at Jamestown Settlement through January 2020.
Photo by Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation

Elsewhere

October 27, 2025

From majestic mountains to lovely lakes, from skylines to coastlines, and from small-town charm to big-city energy—New York, a state unlike any other, has it ...

October 27, 2025

“Utah will yet become the treasure house of the nation.” Abraham Lincoln, America’s 16th president, famously said those words in 1862, three decades before Utah ...

October 24, 2025

What tour operators might see as a roadblock, the team at Southwest Adventure Tours views as an open lane for groups touring Utah’s popular national ...