Model of James Fort on Jamestown Island*

Old Town Main Page

On December 20, 1606, three ships set sail from England for North America. On board were many of the investors in the Virginia Company and their hired men—104 total, plus 39 crew members—who hoped to build a permanent settlement on land that they could exploit for a profit. Because England was in a perpetual conflict with Spain, the settlers had to choose a site they could easily defend, and they would have to build a fort immediately.

North America was first spotted on April 26, 1607, near what is today Virginia Beach, Virginia. A small party of men went ashore, naming the landing spot Cape Henry, and ended up having a violent encounter with the local Indians that left two men injured. Remember, Europeans had been coming to the Americas for over one-hundred years, so the east coast Indians were well aware of them and the troubles that were sure to follow.

The colonists reached a settlement site on Jamestown Island three weeks later, May 14th. Within a week they were attacked by Powhatan Indians, with one colonist being killed. A fort had been a necessity from the start, but the colonists soon realized that it was not the Spanish they had to worry about. With the Indian situation looking dire, they began construction on a wooden fort and completed the work within a few weeks. Their new home was called James Fort.

Though nearly ending in an early death, Jamestown went on to thrive as a town, serving as the capital of the Virginia colony until 1699 when the capital was moved to Williamsburg. After that, Jamestown fell into decline. While there were still a few people living on the island up until the early 1900s, nearly everyone had left by the mid 1700s. By then the location of James Fort had faded from everyone’s memory.

The story of how James Fort was rediscovered is quite interesting. Based on historical writings, colonists claimed that the deep waters of the James River allowed their boats to come so close to shore that they could be moored to the trees. Historians always assumed this meant that the fort was also right next to the shore, and knowing that the river had eroded the shoreline over the years, it was believed that the fort site was underwater. Because of this assumption, there was never any attempt to find James Fort. New Town, on the other hand, the residential and business area established as the population of Jamestown grew beyond the fort walls, had been excavated as early as the 1930s by the National Park Service. Some of these excavations were within a hundred yards of the fort site, yet James Fort remained lost to time.

The only standing structure from the 17th century at Jamestown is the brick tower of a church built around 1676 (this is not the standing church, which was built in 1906). Per historical records, there was a church within the original fort walls that was eventually replaced by the brick church. An archaeologist who specialized in Colonial American history named William Kelso did not believe that the fort was under water and that it could still be found. He had a theory that any subsequent churches would have been built on or near the original church. Since there was plenty of land between the church tower and the James River, this would be a good place to start looking for James Fort.

It took ten years of trying to convince Preservation Virginia, the organization that owned the land since 1893, that he could find the fort if he could excavate the area. In 1994, an agreement was made and the work began. Kelso found artifacts from the Jamestown era on the very first day of digging when he unearthed what turned out to be a pit full of weapons, armor, ceramics, and coins. Within three years he had found the footprint of the fort’s palisade wall (wall built with tall logs), proving without a doubt that the fort was not in the river after all, but near the church as he predicted.

To find the exact location of the palisade walls, the top soil was cleared away to a depth at which a plow would have typically churned up the earth—called a “plow zone.” Anything below this depth had most likely never been disturbed. When Kelso and his team got down to three feet below the surface, they found circular shapes that looked like stains on the hard clay, one after another. These were created by the rotting logs of the palisade wall. All the archaeologists had to do was to keep uncovering soil marks to expose the exact location of the fort. To confirm the finding, Kelso turned to the historical documents of William Strachey, the first secretary of Jamestown. He had made written descriptions of all early structures, including the dimensions. His measurements of the fort wall matched those of the wall Kelso had unearthed to within a few feet.