Ruins of Jamestown

The ruins and relics of Jamestown, the first settlement (1607) and capital of the Virginia colony, were important elements in the old town’s remaking as a historical landscape beginning in the early nineteenth century. Visitors made their way to Jamestown to see, touch, and sometimes pilfer the ruins, articulating a story of Jamestown as the birthplace of the United States. This article examines that story, or founding myth, and the role the Jamestown landscape played in the story’s creation. Race sits at the core of the Jamestown myth, from the colonists’ initial encounters in Native territory to the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in 1619 to how those events are commemorated and memorialized. Of the many ruins, relics, and artifacts associated with Jamestown, four in particular—the church tower, the 1608 fort, the powder magazine, and the statehouse ruin—appear or are referenced most consistently in the commemorative accounts. These features are the signs and symbols of the colonial project, their material reality reinforcing the truth of the Jamestown founding narrative.