Site of the first permanent British settlement in North America.
It was founded in May 1607, on the Jamestown Island peninsula in Virginia's James River . Named after King James I , it initiated the cultivation of tobacco and established the continent's first representative government (1619). When Williamsburg replaced it as the capital of Virginia in 1699, it fell into decline. By the mid-19th century, erosion had transformed the peninsula into an island. In 1936 it was incorporated into the Colonial National Historical Park .