Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in North America.
The settlement was established in 1607 on Jamestown Island in the Colony of Virginia by the Virginia Company of London. Its settlers built a fortified community along the James River, naming it for King James I of England. Disease, hunger, conflict, and difficult relations with nearby Indigenous peoples threatened the colony during its early years.
Jamestown survived and eventually became economically important through tobacco cultivation, especially after John Rolfe helped develop a marketable tobacco crop. It served as the capital of the Virginia Colony until 1699, when the capital moved to Williamsburg. Jamestown is often compared with Roanoke, an earlier English colony that disappeared, and Plymouth, founded in 1620 by English Pilgrims. St. Augustine, founded by Spain in 1565, predates Jamestown but was not an English settlement. These distinctions matter when discussing the many European colonies that preceded the United States.