Jamestown became the first permanent English settlement in the area that became the United States.
The Virginia Company established Jamestown in 1607 on an island in the James River. Although the settlement suffered from disease, hunger, conflict, and difficult conditions, it survived after earlier English attempts, including Roanoke, had failed or disappeared.
Jamestown was the capital of the Virginia Colony until 1699, when the seat of government moved to Williamsburg. The colony’s development was closely connected to tobacco cultivation, especially after John Rolfe helped make tobacco an important export.
Jamestown is often confused with Plymouth, founded by English colonists in 1620. St. Augustine, founded by the Spanish in 1565, predates Jamestown as a European settlement in what is now the continental United States, but it was not English.