Virginia

Virginia is home to about 8.7 million people across 42,775 square miles, one of the most historically significant states in the country and, today, one of its wealthiest. Richmond is the capital, while Virginia Beach is the largest city, and Northern Virginia — Arlington, Alexandria, and Fairfax County — functions effectively as part of the Washington DC metro. Virginia carries the nickname "The Old Dominion," a reference to being England's first overseas dominion, and is also called the "Mother of Presidents," having been the birthplace of eight US presidents including Washington, Jefferson, and Madison.

Virginia's geography spans five physiographic provinces from east to west — the Coastal Plain, the Piedmont, the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Ridge and Valley region holding the Shenandoah Valley, and the Appalachian Plateau in the extreme southwest — giving the state a complete cross-section of eastern US terrain from tidal estuary to mountain plateau within a single state. Virginia was the site of the first permanent English settlement in North America at Jamestown in 1607 and the location of the Revolutionary War's final battle at Yorktown in 1781; it later served as the Confederacy's capital during the Civil War and holds more Civil War battlefields than any other state.

Virginia's economy is dominated by the federal government and defense contracting — Northern Virginia has the densest concentration of defense and intelligence contractors anywhere in the world, and Amazon's second headquarters occupies Arlington's National Landing neighborhood. The Port of Virginia in Hampton Roads is one of the largest container ports on the East Coast, and the state remains a significant agricultural producer of tobacco, poultry, and increasingly wine.

Virginia's mountains cluster into two parallel systems: the Blue Ridge, running the full length of the state, and the Allegheny Front to the west. Mount Rogers (5,729 ft), Virginia's highest point near the North Carolina border, is itself forested and viewless, but the surrounding Grayson Highlands hold high, open balds above 5,000 feet where wild ponies — descendants of animals introduced in the 1970s to control vegetation — graze freely among rhododendron thickets.

Shenandoah National Park and Skyline Drive

Shenandoah National Park is the most-visited national park in the mid-Atlantic, its 105-mile Skyline Drive passing 75 overlooks along the Blue Ridge crest. Old Rag Mountain, the most popular hike in the state, involves a genuine mile of rock scrambling through granite boulders and chimneys on its way to a 360-degree summit view, and Hawksbill Mountain, the park's highest peak at 4,051 feet, offers what many consider Shenandoah's single finest overlook. Dark Hollow Falls, a 70-foot cascade over ancient greenstone basalt, is the park's most popular waterfall hike, while Overall Run Falls, the tallest in Shenandoah at 93 feet, rewards a longer approach with a two-tiered drop overlooking the valley below.

McAfee Knob and the Blue Ridge Parkway

McAfee Knob near Roanoke is the single most-photographed viewpoint on the entire Appalachian Trail, a rock ledge projecting from Catawba Mountain above the Roanoke Valley, and the Virginia stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway runs 217 additional miles south from Shenandoah to the North Carolina border, passing Mabry Mill — a 1905 water-powered grist mill whose reflection in its millpond is one of the most photographed scenes on the entire Parkway. Crabtree Falls in Nelson County, a series of five cascades totaling 1,200 feet of descent, is the highest waterfall east of the Mississippi River.

Virginia's largest cities split between the Hampton Roads naval complex on the Chesapeake and the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington DC, a legacy of the state's unusual system where cities are legally independent of the counties surrounding them.

Virginia Beach and Norfolk

Virginia Beach, the state's largest city, combines 35-plus miles of Atlantic beachfront with a major naval presence from neighboring Naval Station Norfolk and Oceana Naval Air Station, and at 248 square miles it's also one of the largest US cities by land area. Norfolk anchors the Hampton Roads military complex around the world's largest naval station by ship count, while maintaining genuine cultural depth through the free-admission Chrysler Museum of Art and the Granby Street arts corridor.

Arlington and Richmond

Arlington, technically a county but functioning as a city, has become the most economically dense county in the country, its Crystal City neighborhood now home to Amazon's second headquarters alongside the Pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery. Richmond, the capital, carries a genuinely dual identity as both the former capital of the Confederacy and the seat of the modern Commonwealth, and its Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is the largest art museum in the entire southeastern US.

The Economy

Federal spending and defense contracting anchor Virginia's economy more than any other single force — Northern Virginia's Fairfax, Arlington, Loudoun, and Prince William Counties hold the densest concentration of defense and intelligence contractors on Earth, home to firms like Booz Allen Hamilton, Leidos, and General Dynamics IT alongside the Pentagon itself. The Port of Virginia in Hampton Roads is the deepest natural harbor on the US East Coast, one of the few able to accommodate post-Panamax container ships, and agriculture remains genuinely significant too — Virginia leads the eastern US in tobacco production and is home to the fastest-growing wine region on the East Coast, centered on the Monticello AVA around Charlottesville.

The University of Virginia in Charlottesville, designed by Thomas Jefferson himself as an "academical village" where students and professors would live and learn together, is consistently ranked among the top one or two public universities in the country, with the Rotunda's Neoclassical architecture — modeled on the Pantheon — standing as one of the finest examples of the style in the US. William & Mary in Williamsburg, chartered in 1693, is the second-oldest university in the country, and its 1695 Wren Building remains the oldest academic building still in active use nationally. Virginia Tech in Blacksburg is nationally prominent in engineering, consistently ranking top-10 in multiple disciplines, and its Corps of Cadets is the third-largest uniformed student body in the country.

At the high school level, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria is consistently ranked the number-one public high school in the entire country by US News & World Report, its research laboratories in molecular biology and applied mathematics rivaling university departments, with graduates admitted to MIT, Caltech, Stanford, and the Ivy League at extraordinary rates. Maggie L. Walker Governor's School in Richmond serves as the region's selective magnet for government and international studies, and Langley and McLean High Schools in Fairfax County anchor one of the largest and best-funded public school districts in the entire country.

Virginia's visitor identity spans more American history than any other state, from the first English settlement to the Confederacy's surrender.

Colonial Williamsburg and the Historic Triangle

Colonial Williamsburg, the largest outdoor living history museum in the world, restores the 18th-century Virginia colonial capital across 300-plus buildings — 88 of them original — with 1,700 costumed interpreters bringing 1770s life to the Duke of Gloucester Street. The Colonial Parkway connects Williamsburg to Jamestown, site of the first permanent English settlement in 1607, and Yorktown, where the Revolutionary War's final battle was fought in 1781, together forming the Historic Triangle that rewards two to three unhurried days of exploration.

Shenandoah and the Civil War Trail

Skyline Drive through Shenandoah National Park, continuing south as the Blue Ridge Parkway, forms 322 combined miles of Virginia's two great scenic drives along the Blue Ridge crest. The Shenandoah Valley Civil War Trail along US-11 runs from Winchester through Staunton to New Market — where VMI cadets as young as 15 fought in the 1864 battle — and on to Lexington, where Robert E. Lee is buried in the Lee Chapel on the Washington and Lee University campus.

Family Weekends and Historic Towns

Colonial Williamsburg pairs naturally with the adjacent Busch Gardens theme park for a full family Historic Triangle trip, and Luray Caverns, the largest cave system in the eastern US, features the Stalacpipe Organ — the world's largest musical instrument, its stalactites tuned to specific pitches and struck to produce music. Charlottesville combines two UNESCO World Heritage Sites within a few miles of each other — the University of Virginia's Academical Village and Jefferson's Monticello — and Appomattox Court House preserves the modest village where Lee formally surrendered to Grant on April 9, 1865, ending the Civil War.