Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in the region that became the thirteen colonies.
The Virginia Company established Jamestown in 1607 on an island in the James River in present-day Virginia. The settlement was named for King James I of England and became the capital of the Colony of Virginia for many years.
Jamestown’s early survival was precarious because of disease, hunger, conflict, and poor relations with neighboring Indigenous peoples. Tobacco cultivation, especially after John Rolfe’s experiments with marketable tobacco, helped make Virginia economically viable and encouraged further English settlement.
Jamestown is often confused with Roanoke, an earlier English colony that disappeared, and Plymouth, founded in 1620 by English Puritans. Jamestown predates Plymouth by thirteen years and is generally identified as the first permanent English settlement in North America, although Indigenous societies had lived in the region for thousands of years.