Virginia is one of the most historic states in the country. The first permanent English settlement in North America was at Jamestown in 1607; the first college, William & Mary, was founded in Williamsburg in 1693; eight US presidents were born here. Four of the Civil War's biggest battlefields — Manassas, Fredericksburg, the Wilderness, Appomattox — lie within the state, and Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his army at Appomattox Court House in 1865.
Northern Virginia, pressed up against Washington DC, is the wealthiest and most densely populated part of the state: Arlington, Alexandria, and the Dulles tech corridor. It feels less like Southern Virginia than an extension of the capital. Richmond, the capital and the former capital of the Confederacy, is a mid-sized city on the James River with a good restaurant scene and strong civil-rights history.
Further south and west, the state turns rural and Southern. The Shenandoah Valley runs between the Blue Ridge and the Allegheny mountains and carries Shenandoah National Park, Skyline Drive, and the northern end of the Blue Ridge Parkway — some of the best hiking and driving country on the east coast. On the coast, Virginia Beach and Norfolk anchor the Tidewater region; further inland, Charlottesville is a college town built around Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and the University of Virginia. Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown form a "Historic Triangle" that is the closest thing the country has to an open-air museum of its founding.
