Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in America, founded in 1607.
The settlement was established on May 14, 1607, by the Virginia Company on an island in the James River in present-day Virginia. It became the capital of the Virginia Colony and remained an important center of English activity in North America for much of the 17th century.
Jamestown’s survival was difficult. Colonists faced disease, hunger, conflict, and limited supplies. Trade with nearby Indigenous peoples and the cultivation of tobacco later helped the colony become economically more stable.
Jamestown is often compared with Roanoke, an earlier English colony that disappeared, and Plymouth, founded by English Separatists in 1620. St. Augustine was founded earlier, in 1565, but it was a Spanish settlement, not an English one.