List of former counties, cities, and towns of Virginia
In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh sent Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe to explore the coast of present-day North Carolina, and they returned with word of a regional native chief named "Wingina."
The colony reached a low point during the "starving time" in 1609-1610 when over 80% of the 500 colonists perished after the third supply mission was disrupted by a massive hurricane in the North Atlantic.
However, with the arrival of new supplies, leadership in the person of Lord Delaware, and John Rolfe's successful cultivation of tobacco for export as a cash crop.
Though Jamestown became a permanent settlement, it was largely abandoned as a population center a century later, when the capital was moved to higher ground at Middle Plantation, soon renamed Williamsburg.
Kecoughtan, a better-sited location in the present-day independent city of Hampton, was essentially stolen from Native Americans in 1610 by the English colonists, under the leadership of Sir Thomas Gates.
In the 21st century, through the old American Indian village of Kecoughtan, the City of Hampton lays claim to status as the oldest continually occupied settlement in the British Colonies in what is now the United States.
The timely arrival of another relief fleet (bearing Governor Lord De La Warre) granted the colony a reprieve.
Having counties composed of areas of common interests to the citizens became a more important factor as the distance one could travel in a single day increased.
Of these, as of 2007, five of the eight original shires are considered still extant in the Commonwealth of Virginia in essentially their same political form (county), though some boundaries and several names have changed in almost 400 years.
In Virginia, beginning in 1871, under state constitutional changes after the American Civil War (1861–1865), cities became politically independent of the counties.
As tensions flared into protest and then battle during the American Revolution, large numbers of Virginia settlers began migrating through the Cumberland Gap into what is now Kentucky.
For the western areas, problems were the distance from the state seat of government in Richmond and the difference of common economic interests resultant from the tobacco and food crops farming, fishing, and coastal shipping on the Eastern Continental Divide (waters that drain to the Atlantic Ocean) along the Allegheny Mountains, and the interests of the western portion, which drained to the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and the Gulf of Mexico.
Major crises in the Virginia state government were averted during the period before the American Civil War, but the underlying problems were fundamental and never well-resolved.
The American Civil War brought Virginia's internal problems with eastern and western conflicting state governmental needs to resolution.
Over the period from the beginning of the 17th century through modern times, much of the development of Virginia, as well as the establishment and major changes in communities were relative to patterns of commerce and transportation.
Naming of locations often related to prominent local families, financiers in some cases, and frequently utilized nearby geographic features.
Virginia law provides for incorporated towns and independent cities to have the power to annex portions of contiguous localities at a lesser level.
Many leaders have felt that Virginia's annexation laws are a barrier to regional cooperation among localities, creating an air of mistrust, and a feeling among citizens that such changes often take place against their will.
In the late spring of 1610, following a winter that became known as the Starving Time, the surviving settlers packed up and set sail down the James River toward Hampton Roads, the Chesapeake Bay, and the Atlantic Ocean.
They encountered a new supply convoy headed for Jamestown on an expedition led by the new governor appointed by King James, Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr.
Virginia laws enacted late in the 20th century enabled smaller independent cities to revert (or convert) to town status, which included rejoining a county.
While natural factors doomed Jamestown, they also literally wiped out Boyd's Ferry, which was virtually entirely destroyed by flooding of the Dan River in Halifax County around 1800.
For example, in the creation of Shenandoah National Park and the Skyline Drive between 1924 and 1936, a number of families and entire communities were required to vacate portions of the Blue Ridge Mountains, mostly by actions of the Commonwealth of Virginia, which then ceded land to the federal government.
The Commonwealth of Virginia, initially led by efforts of Harry Flood Byrd, used the Great Depression and access to jobs and modern amenities such as indoor plumbing and public schools to help justify the controversial dislodging of the mountain residents.
A little-known fact is that, while some families were removed by force, a few others (who mostly had also become difficult to deal with) were allowed to stay after their properties were acquired, living in the park until nature took its course and they gradually died.
According to the Virginia Historical Society, 85-year-old Hezekiah Lam explained, "I ain't so crazy about leavin' these hills but I never believed in bein' ag'in the Government.
Gilead Baptist Church on U.S. Route 60 in the Grove Community maintains cemeteries at both the old location (now on the closed base of Camp Peary) and the newer one.
Also in 1943, the site of another nearby town, Penniman, was acquired and absorbed into the Cheatham Annex complex, which adjoins Camp Peary, and is part of the Naval Weapons Station Yorktown.
Likewise, in Northern Virginia, a Resettlement Administration program was begun to turn an area in Eastern Prince William County into a park for the nearby city of Washington, D.C. that resulted in the loss of three towns: Batestown, Hickory Ridge, and Joplin.
Though some residents persisted, this changed with the onset of World War II, with the parkland becoming an Office of Strategic Services spy training facility.
