First Landing State Park

In the spring of 1607, three small English ships carrying about a hundred settlers reached the Virginia capes after a long Atlantic crossing. They came ashore near this cape, which they named Cape Henry, spent several days exploring and gathering fresh water, and had their first, tense encounters with the Native people of the region before sailing on up the bay to establish Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America.

That landing set in motion the sweeping and often painful history that followed, the founding of the Virginia colony, the collision with the Powhatan paramountcy that already governed this land, and the long consequences for Native peoples and, soon after, for the enslaved Africans brought to the colony. The park preserves the wild shoreline much as those colonists might have seen it, a rare surviving glimpse of the coast at the moment of first contact.

When the English arrived, this coast was not empty. It lay within Tsenacomoco, the domain of the Powhatan paramount chiefdom, a powerful alliance of Algonquian-speaking peoples under the leader the English called Powhatan. The tribes of the region fished the bay, farmed the fertile ground, and had lived along these waters for countless generations before the ships appeared.

Their descendants are still here. Virginia is home to several federally recognized tribes with roots in the Powhatan world, among them the Pamunkey, Chickahominy, Rappahannock, Nansemond, and others, who continue to sustain their communities and cultures today. A visit to First Landing is a chance to remember that the colonists' first landing was also an arrival on land that already had deep and living human history.

The park's natural showpiece is its cypress swamp, a shadowy, watery forest of bald cypress trees with their knobby knees rising from tea-colored water and Spanish moss trailing from the branches. This is about the northernmost place along the Atlantic coast where bald cypress and Spanish moss grow together, giving the park a distinctly southern, almost bayou-like feel far up the mid-Atlantic shore.

The signature Bald Cypress Trail loops through this swamp on a boardwalk, letting visitors walk dry-shod into the heart of a habitat that would otherwise be off limits. Beyond the swamp, the park holds maritime forest, dunes, and salt marsh, a full cross-section of coastal habitats, home to herons, owls, turtles, and countless songbirds along its many miles of trail.

What makes First Landing so remarkable is its setting. Just a few miles from the boardwalk, hotels, and crowds of the Virginia Beach oceanfront, the park offers cypress wilderness and a quiet, calm bay beach with none of the resort bustle. It is a green refuge that lets visitors trade the busy oceanfront for a slower, wilder day whenever they want.

That contrast is the park's gift. Families can spend the morning walking cool swamp boardwalks or paddling quiet creeks, then swim off a gentle bay beach, all within reach of the city's restaurants and attractions. It proves that even a major resort city can hold a genuine pocket of wildness, and it draws visitors year after year for exactly that.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.