Henry Town

Archaeologist Floyd Painter of the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences (now the Chrysler Museum of Art) originally excavated the site in 1955, but it was only conclusively determined to be Henry Town in 2007 by United States Army scientists reviewing the site's artifacts, and no primary source documents exist (save those supposedly held by one now-deceased archaeologist).

The historical and archeological site is immediately north of U.S. Route 60 (Shore Drive) on what is now Lake Joyce, formerly an inlet connecting with Pleasure House Creek, a western branch of the Lynnhaven River, itself an estuary of the Chesapeake Bay and Hampton Roads.

Captain John Smith of Jamestown wrote of returning to Cape Henry in 1608 after his crew and a small boat outfitted with a sail had completed their first of several explorations of the coast and length of the Chesapeake Bay, but did not mention why or exactly where.

The site's artifacts also contained Dutch and Portuguese pottery fragments that point to later settlement and tobacco pipe pieces that are nearly the same as some from the neighboring colonial Province of Maryland that have been reliably dated to about 1650.

At nearby Cape Henry, east of the Lynnhaven River, the First Landing Foundation will undertake a $700,000 project to build more than a dozen structures as well as an outdoor stage to conduct historical dramas.