I had the opportunity to spend the weekend near Williamsburg, VA and while I was there, visited Yorktown (the location where Cornwallis surrendered to Washington, thus ending the revolutionary war), and Jamestown.
For those of you that don't know, Jamestown is documented to be the first Permanent English settlement in America.
I found Jamestown's story and history to be incredible. Much like the stories of the founding fathers, or even the beginnings and continuation of the LDS church, Jamestown survived in spite of the overwhelming odds of failure.
Time ran a great series of Articles on Jamestown this past week, and here's the first. It gives a brief rundown of the history and how the settlers got there and how they survived.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...615175,00.html
The next article is about John Smith, an unlikely leader who escaped slavery as a young man by killing his master and avoided the Gallows a few times in his life to ultimately lead this group of settlers and become a key factor in the positive aspects of the settlers relationship with the Indians here in Virginia.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...615180,00.html
Finally, the last article I'll link to discusses the archeological dig that is taking place and has taken place since the 1990s. One of the first digs on the Jamestown site took place in the early 1930s, and the site was rarely touched after that because many of the experts believed that the fort was under water in the James river, but an archeologist in the mid 1990s had other ideas and ever since then, artifacts have been excavated by the hundreds of thousands and the work continues today.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...615195,00.html
I found these articles to be interesting and I really enjoyed my experience in Jamestown. Colonial Williamsburg gets a lot of the advertising and publicity, but I had a pretty neat experience walking the grounds of the original Jamestown fort and reading about the first settlers to permanently be in America and the way they lived and more importantly, survived.
I would recommend a visit if you are ever out in Virginia, it is well worth your time.