Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. The Virginia Colony settlement was established in 1607 by the London Company and named for King James I of England.
The settlers built Jamestown on an island in the James River in present-day Virginia. Its location offered some defensive advantages, but the settlement faced disease, hunger, conflict, and difficult relations with nearby Indigenous peoples. The colony survived after repeated crises and became a center of English government in the region.
Jamestown is sometimes confused with Roanoke, an earlier English colony that disappeared and did not become a permanent settlement. Plymouth was founded later, in 1620, by English colonists known as the Pilgrims. St. Augustine, founded by Spain in 1565, predates Jamestown but was not an English settlement.