• What to know if you go

William Schemmel/Special (ENLARGE)
In the well-groomed, pleasant landscape of Colonial Williamsburg, the public stocks are a reminder that 18th-century America was hardly a Colonial American Disneyland.
William Schemmel/Special (ENLARGE)
Jamestown bakers are among the many artisans who provide living history lessons in VirginiaÕs History Triangle.
WILLIAM SCHEMMEL/Special (ENLARGE)
A Colonial soldier awaits visitors at the Yorktown Victory Center, part of the Colonial National Historical Park, which also includes Jamestown, Va.
WILLIAM SCHEMMEL/Special (ENLARGE)
Horse-drawn carriages are about the only vehicles visible near the Governors Palace in Colonial Williamsburg in daylight hours. Motor vehicles are severely restricted.
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Jamestown, Va. — From the ferry in the James River, the shoreline is green with leafing trees. A statue of Capt. John Smith looks across the river, more than 3,000 miles to England.

On a morning like this, in May 1607, Smith and 103 other Englishmen saw this shoreline of Jamestown Island at the end of a four-month voyage across the Atlantic. The foothold they would establish evolved into the first permanent English settlement in North America.

On May 11-13, 2007, Jamestown will observe its 400th anniversary as "The birthplace of America" with more than a dozen major events. They get under way this year, with the opening of a new visitors' center and exhibits and a celebration in Yorktown, Oct. 19-22, of the 225th anniversary of the end of the Revolution.

English Colonial America came to a dramatic end 174 years after it began. In October 1781, George Washington and his French allies trapped the imperious Gen. Charles Cornwallis and his British army on the Yorktown Peninsula of the Chesapeake Bay. While the French fleet's blockade prevented the British from getting crucial supplies or escaping, Washington's Continental Army bombarded them by land for nine days. Shocked and humiliated, Cornwallis surrendered on Oct. 19. When the guns went silent and the truce was signed, the new United States was free and on its own.

Puritans weren't the first

Though many might identify the Pilgrims and Plymouth Rock as America's first settlement, they'd be wrong.

"We say we're coming out from under Plymouth Rock," says Mike Litterst, public information officer for Colonial National Historical Park, which includes Historic Jamestowne, site of the original settlement; the 4,000-acre Yorktown Battlefield and surrender sites; and the 23-mile Colonial Parkway that connects Yorktown, Jamestown and Colonial Williamsburg, the icons of Virginia's Historic Triangle.

"They [the Plymouth settlers] had the first branding in North America," Litterst says. "They came here 13 years after Jamestown, but they wore buckle shoes and funny hats. They landed on a rock and called themselves Pilgrims. They came to establish a colony founded for religious freedom, and they held the first Thanksgiving.

"The Jamestown settlers didn't come to establish a colony. They were employees of the London Virginia Company, sent here to find gold and other resources for the company's investors," he continues. "They didn't find gold, but in 1619 they held the first representative assembly in English America. They survived drought, starvation and attacks by hostile Powhatan Indians, which decimated the population. After the Colonial capital moved to Williamsburg in 1699, Jamestown was virtually abandoned, but it gave us the roots that define America today."

Colonial National Historical Park and the state of Virginia, which operates "living history" attractions at Yorktown and Jamestown, are enhancing facilities that will go far beyond the landmark celebrations.

Ongoing digs provide artifacts for viewing

At Historic Jamestowne, the National Park Service is spending $60 million for a new visitor center and an Archaearium that will showcase millions of artifacts unearthed from ongoing archaeological digs. New interpretive exhibits highlight the lives of the settlers, including the oft-told tale of Capt. John Smith, Pocahontas and John Rolfe. Powhatan princess Pocahontas saved Smith from Indian sacrifice, loved and befriended him, and married Rolfe, a successful English tobacco planter. Colin Farrell portrays Capt. Smith in "The New World," a recent Terrence Malick film.

"Earlier commemorations of Jamestown left out the contributions of the Powhatan Indians, who lived here 12,000 years before the English came, and also the contributions of Africans, who were brought here as slaves in 1620," Litterst says. "The 400th anniversary will be a melding of all three cultures. Some of the stories we're happy to tell, others are more painful, but these are all part of the larger story we're going to tell."

Watch archaeologists at work

Visitors to Historic Jamestowne can watch archaeologists with the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities uncover sections of the 1607 fort and foundations of New Towne, where settlers expanded eastward from the fort. John Smith's statue surveys what he envisioned as, "a verie fit place for the erecting of a great cittie." A statue of Pocahontas sits demurely nearby.

At the Glasshouse, interpreters in knee britches and cotton shirts create glass with a wood-fired kiln, as early 17th- century artisans did.

"It was their first attempt at a profit-making industry," Litterst explains. "They had the hardwoods and minerals for glass-making, but it failed after two attempts, in 1608 and 1620. When Italian artisans walked off in a dispute over compensation in 1620, it was the first labor dispute in English America. Cultivation of tobacco became the cash crop that assured the colony's survival."

At the state of Virginia's neighboring Jamestown Settlement, the museum built for the 350th anniversary in 1957 is adding enlarged interpretive exhibits and films. Outdoors, a new Powhatan village focuses on the Native Americans' lives and their frequently hostile relations with the English.

Inside the triangular wooden palisade of the re-created James Fort, costumed interpreters weave flax, fire matchlock muskets, bake bread, forge tools and make thatched roofs for the settlement's brick and wood structures.

As you walk through the claustrophobic 'tween deck passenger quarters of the replica of the Susan Constant that brought settlers to Jamestown, you feel for the sanity of the 104 men who endured four months on this small, fragile ship and her sisters, Godspeed and Discovery.

Yorktown saved from being plowed under

One-hundred-fifty years after the climactic battle that ended the Revolution, the Yorktown Battlefield was in danger of becoming a golf course. The course had been roughed out, using some of the 1781 earthworks, and a resort hotel was planned. The Wall Street crash of 1929 fortunately bankrupted the developers.

Saved from desecration, the battlefield was included with Jamestown in the 9,000-acre Colonial National Historical Park, created in 1936. Washington's canvas headquarters tent is among the thousands of artifacts in the visitors center and museum. A nine-mile driving tour includes the British and American-French siege lines, cannon batteries, encampment areas and surrender sites.

At the home of Yorktown merchant Augustine Moore — "the most famous house in America you've never heard of," Litterst says — negotiators haggled over crucial points (the fate of the surrendered British soldiers) and minutiae (flags to be flown, music to be played at the formal surrender. Litterst says that, contrary to stories written years later, the British military band did not play the ironic tune, "The World Turned Upside Down," which hadn't been written yet). After 18 hours, the truce was signed.

On surrender day, Cornwallis said he was sick

On the afternoon of Oct. 19, Cornwallis' army marched through mile-long ranks of American and French troops onto the Surrender Field. Cornwallis himself was a no-show. "He sent word that he was sick," Litterst says, "but it's widely believed he was only sick at heart."

The surrender ceremony went according to 18th-century military protocol. When Cornwallis' second in command, a brigadier general, attempted to surrender Cornwallis' sword to Washington, Washington refused and ordered him to hand the sword to an American officer of equal rank. When the British said they'd surrender their arms only to a commissioned officer, Washington sent a 14-year-old navy ensign.

Shocked at their defeat by the ragtag American army, the proud Brits, many in tears, laid down their battle flags and weapons and marched off to prison camps, where they stayed until the Treaty of Paris in 1783 officially ended the war. Many of them chose to start new lives in the country they fought to defeat.

At the state of Virginia's Yorktown Victory Center, Continental Army soldiers camp out, cook over open fires, fire their rifles and cannons. Farmers tend crops as they did in the 1780s. A museum exhibits a time line leading up to the Revolution.

Williamsburg was once big and rich

One of America's first planned cities, Williamsburg succeeded Jamestown as Virginia's capital in 1699. By the Revolutionary era, it was the prosperous seat of England's richest, largest and most populous colony. On paper, at least, its boundaries reached all the way to present-day Minnesota. Shops were filled with English goods.

Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and other wealthy gentlemen gambled and imbibed at the King's Arms and other taverns. The British royal governor lived in a stately palace. In taverns and on the streets, Jefferson, Patrick Henry and other patriots railed against the king's taxes and tyranny.

When Virginia's capital moved 50 miles west to Richmond in 1780, Williamsburg suffered the same fate as Jamestown 81 years earlier. Largely abandoned, its fine homes, churches and public buildings fell into ruin. The Capitol and Governors Palace burned. By the turn of the 20th century, there was little left.

In 1926, Dr. W.A.R. Goodwin, rector of Williamsburg's Bruton Parish Church, shared his vision of preserving the city's historic buildings with philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. Rockefeller funded the reconstruction of the Capitol, the Governors Palace and some 80 other original structures.

Under the aegis of the nonprofit Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the 310-acre historic area, 85 percent of the original city, is touted as "the world's largest living history museum." Bisected by mile-long, pedestrian-only Duke of Gloucester Street, the area contains 88 original structures, 50 major reconstructions and 40 exhibition buildings. There are 90 acres of gardens and greens and several museums.

Too many smiles?

It may strike some visitors as a sort of Colonial American offspring of Disney's Epcot — townsfolk are all smiles and bonhomie, the droppings of carriage horses are virtually the only blemishes on the pristine streets. William & Mary College students seem to jog from the future rather than their 310-year-old campus at the end of Duke of Gloucester.

But even cynics fall under the 18th-century spell as they chat with costumed tradesmen employed as weavers, blacksmiths, silversmiths, wheelwrights, wig makers and milliners and craftsmen working on cabinets, clocks, candlesticks, barrels, muskets, saddles and harnesses and other 18th-century staples. Tourists in shorts and jeans fall in step with the Fife and Drum Corps marching smartly through the town.

At the end of our walking tour, the guide asks :

"Does nobody know the color of George Washington's favorite wig?"

"White, gray, blue?" group members shout.

"It's a trick question," the guide says. "He didn't wear a wig. He styled his own hair like a wig, in the fashion of the day."

• Colonial National Historical Park, P.O. Box 210, Yorktown, VA 23690. 757-898-2409, www.nps.gov and search for Colonial National Historic Park. Williamsburg Area Convention & Visitors Bureau, P.O. Box 3585, Williamsburg, VA 23187. 1-800-368-6511, www.visit williamsburg.com.

• Jamestown Settlement and Yorktown Victory Center, P.O. Box 1607, Williamsburg, VA 23187. 1-888-593-4682, www.historyisfun.org.

Fees: Historic Jamestowne: Adults, $8; age 16 and under no charge. Yorktown Battlefield: Adults, $5; age 16 and under free. Combination Historic Jamestowne-Yorktown, $10.

Jamestown Settlement: Adults, $11.75; ages 6 to 12, $5.75. Yorktown Victory Center: Adults, $8.25; ages 6 to 12, $4. Combination ticket with Jamestown Settlement: Adults, $17; ages 6 to 12, $8.25.

Colonial Williamsburg: No admission charge for the historic area, but tickets are required to enter most buildings and working tradesmen shops. Adults, $34; ages 6 to 14, $15.

Where to stay

• Lodgings operated by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in the historic area include the five-star Williamsburg Inn; Woodlands Hotel & Suites (next to the visitors center); Williamsburg Lodge; Governors Inn and rental Colonial Houses. A shuttle bus connects the hotels with the historic area.

Where to eat

• The King's Arms, Raleigh Tavern, Shield's Tavern, Chowning's and Christina Campbell's on Duke of Gloucester Street serve Virginia peanut soup, game pies, Sally Lunn bread and rum trifles, with 18th-century music and entertainment. The small village of Yorktown, adjoining the battlefield, has riverfront restaurants, art galleries and shops. A cafeteria is in the Jamestown Settlement visitors center.