Virginia
State in Eeast USA; nicknamed Old Dominion
Area:
105,600 sq km/40,762 sq mi
Capital:
Richmond
Towns and Cities:
Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Newport News, Hampton, Chesapeake, Portsmouth
Physical:
Blue Ridge Mountains, with the Shenandoah national park; Luray Caverns;
George Washington and Jefferson national forests
Features:
Jamestown Island, the site of the first permanent English settlement
in North America (1607)
Colonial Williamsburg, with craft workers and costumed guides, and
buildings including the capitol and the governor's palace (1720), and
the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Gallery.
Yorktown Battlefield, the site of the last major battle of the American
Revolution, 1781; Alexandria Old Town (established 1749), with 18th-
and 19th-century redbrick buildings, including the boyhood home of Robert
E Lee (1795), Lee-Fendall House (1785), Christ Church, Gadsby's Tavern
Museum (1770), George Washington National Masonic Memorial, and the
Torpedo Factory Art Center; Fredericksburg, with a 40-block national
historic district, including Kenmore (1750s), home of George Washington's
sister, the Hugh Mercer Apothecary Shop, and the James Monroe Museum
and Memorial Library; old Richmond, with the Virginia state capitol
(designed by Thomas Jefferson 1785), the Richmond national battlefield
park, the Museum and White House of the Confederacy, and Agecroft Hall
(a 15th-century house transported from Lancashire 1925). Mount Vernon
(1754), home of George Washington; Monticello (a World Heritage Site),
Thomas Jefferson's house at Charlottesville, built 1769-1809, full of
Jefferson's inventions; Woodlawn (1800) with the Pope-Leighey House
(1940, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright) in its grounds; plantation houses,
including Shirley (1723, the oldest in Virginia), Berkeley (1726, the
home of President William Henry Harrison), Carter's Grove Plantation
(1750), and Oatlands (1803); George Washington's birthplace national
monument, Wakefield; Civil War battlefields, including Manassas (or
Bull Ring) national battlefield park, Fredericksburg, and Spotsylvania
national military park, and Petersburg national battlefield; Stratford
Hall, the birthplace of Robert E Lee; Lexington, with the Lee Memorial
Chapel and Museum, Virginia Military Institute (1839), Stonewall Jackson
House, and the George C Marshall Museum; Appomattox Court House, the
site of General Robert E Lee's surrender to General Ulysses S Grant
1865; Montpelier, home of President James Madison, and in the 20th century
of the du Pont family; Staunton, with the Woodrow Wilson House, and
the Museum of American Frontier Culture; Arlington national cemetery,
the burial place of many US presidents, and veterans of 20th- century
wars; Arlington House, the home of Robert E Lee; the College of William
and Mary, Williamsburg (1693), the second oldest college in the USA;
the University of Virginia (a World Heritage Site) in Charlottesville,
designed and founded 1819 by Thomas Jefferson; Booker T Washington national
monument (his birthplace, and a museum of life under slavery); Virginia
Air and Space Museum, Hampton; US Naval Base, Norfolk; Loudon County
horse farms
More US presidents have come from Virginia than from any other state.
Industries:
Sweet potatoes, maize, tobacco, apples, peanuts, coal, ships, lorries,
paper, chemicals, processed food, textiles
Population:
(1995) 6,618,400
Famous People:
Edgar Allan Poe, Booker T Washington
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