Traveling through VIRGINIA , the oldest, largest and wealthiest of the American colonies and the single most powerful influence on the early United States, is a nonstop history lesson. Pretty and rural it may be, but it's the past that predominates: wherever you go you're pointed towards this or that painstakingly restored two-hundred-year-old building, where something or other happened a long time ago. The more you know about it all, the more rewarding Virginia is to visit, but the historical plaques get a bit ridiculous after a while, marking every spot where George Washington slept, Thomas Jefferson thought, or Robert E. Lee tied his horse to a tree. You can see why Disney chose northern Virginia as the site of its proposed theme park of American history a few years back; and you'll also soon realize that Virginia takes itself a bit too seriously to allow such a project to get off the ground.

Virginia's recorded history began at Jamestown , just off the Chesapeake Bay, with the establishment in 1607 of the first successful British colony in North America. Though the first colonists hoped to find gold, it was tobacco that made their fortunes. The native strain - used for hundreds of years by Virginia's indigenous population, of whom almost no trace remains - was too strongly flavored for European tastes. When a smoother, more palatable variety was introduced in 1615 by John Rolfe - the same man whose shipwreck on Bermuda inspired Shakespeare's The Tempest - tobacco quickly became the colony's major cash crop. Before long, vast plantations, owned by a very few aristocratic families, sprang up along the many broad rivers that flow into Chesapeake Bay. To grow and harvest tobacco required both an immense amount of land - so the Native Americans had to go - and intensive labor which led to the plantation owners bringing in slaves from Africa. By the end of the seventeenth century, enslaved African Americans accounted for nearly half of the colony's 75,000 people; a hundred years later, they numbered over 300,000. Virginians had an enormous impact on the foundation of the nascent United States: George Mason, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and four of the first five US presidents were from Virginia. However, by the mid-1800s the state was in decline, its once fertile fields depleted by overuse and its agrarian economy increasingly eclipsed by the urban and industrialized North.

As the confrontation between North and South over slavery and related economic and political issues grew more divisive, Virginia was caught in the middle. Though this slaveholding state initially voted against secession from the Union, it joined the Confederacy when the Civil War broke out, providing its capital, Richmond, and its military leader, Robert E. Lee, who had previously turned down an offer to lead the Union army. Four long years later, Virginia was ravaged, its towns and cities wrecked, its farmlands ruined and most of its youth dead. It has never regained its early prosperity, or its prominence in national affairs.

Richmond itself was largely destroyed in the war; today it's a small city, with some good museums, and is the best starting point for seeing Virginia. The bulk of the colonial sites are concentrated just to the east, in what is known as the Historic Triangle . Here the remains of Jamestown , the original colony, Williamsburg , the restored colonial capital, and Yorktown , site of the final battle of the Revolutionary War, lie within half an hour's drive of each other. Another historic center, Thomas Jefferson's Charlottesville , sits at the foot of the gorgeous Blue Ridge Mountains , an hour west of Richmond. An attractive small college town in its own right, it's also within easy reach of the natural splendors of Shenandoah National Park and the little towns of the western valleys. Northern Virginia , often visited as a day-trip from Washington DC, features several posh suburbs and a number of restored historic homes, the closest colonial architecture to the capital in Alexandria , and Manassas , the scene of two important Civil War battles.  TOP

Atlantic Coast
One of the busiest of the east coast ports, Norfolk sits midway along the coast at the point where the Chesapeake Bay empties into the Atlantic Ocean. Virginia's only heavily industrial center, it is not a particularly pretty place, but it does have a rich maritime and naval heritage, as well as the Chrysler Museum, one of the nation's best art galleries. Fifteen miles east of Norfolk, along the open Atlantic, low-key Virginia Beach draws summer sun-seekers to the state's only real resort, surrounded by broad beaches and tidal marshlands.

The rest of Virginia's Atlantic coast is on its isolated and sparsely populated Eastern Shore , where the attractive little island town of Chincoteague serves as the headquarters of a wildlife refuge that straddles the Maryland border and forms part of the Assateague Island National Seashore.

Chesapeake Bay Tidewater
At the very heart of Virginia, Richmond and the Chesapeake Bay tidewater are, in many ways, where the US was born. Not only does this fairly compact area hold some of the most important surviving colonial-era sites, it is also where the strength of the nation was tested by the Civil War. The greatest interest is to be found in the compact Historic Triangle , east of Richmond, and in Fredericksburg , to the north, around which several crucial battles were waged.

Northern Virginia
Northern Virginia , almost all of which lies within commuting distance of Washington DC, holds some extremely exclusive suburbs, including McLean and the rest of Fairfax County, which are home to a high proportion of US senators. In contrast, Alexandria , nestled on the Potomac just beyond the limits of the nation's capital, seems at least two centuries removed from the modern political whirl. Further afield, this Anglophile heartland of Virginia's landed gentry - often called "Hunt Country" for their love of horses and fancy-dress blood sports - holds well-preserved eighteenth- and nineteenth-century stately homes, cottages, churches, barns and taverns tucked away along the quiet back roads. It's all very popular with tourists, nowhere more so than Mount Vernon , the longtime home of George Washington, while Manassas to the west was the site of the bloody battles of Bull Run.

Shenandoah Valley
The densely forested 4000ft peaks of the Blue Ridge Mountains form a definite barrier between the history-rich worlds of tidewater Virginia to the east and the rougher river-and-valley country to the west. In between the two, at the geographical center of the state, sits the friendly, manageably small college town of Charlottesville , which holds two great monuments to the mind of Thomas Jefferson . South of Charlottesville, the village of Appommattox is the place at which papers were signed to officially end the Civil War , and is now preserved as an engaging national historic site. To the west, the northern Blue Ridge Mountains, crowned by the dense forests of Shenandoah National Park , run south to Tennessee, culminating in 5729ft Mount Rogers. Little seems to have changed in the lush Shenandoah Valley, on the far side of the mountains, since it was a vital battleground during the Civil War.

I-81, the main highway through the Shenandoah Valley, is joined in the north by I-66 from Washington DC and in the middle by I-64 from Richmond through Charlottesville. Numerous scenic routes are slower but more worthwhile, such as Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway , which weave along the four-hundred-mile-long mountain crest. You'll need a car to get the most out of the region, though cycling is a good option along the many back roads and, for hikers, the Appalachian Trail runs right down the middle. There are plenty of roadside motels, so you needn't be too concerned about advance planning - it's a great place for aimless exploration.   TOP