Perhaps no state is so closely associated with royalty and nobility as Virginia, which is named for a British queen. Virginia is nicknamed “Mother of Presidents” because eight presidents, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, were born there. One of the most famous Native Americans was a Virginian named Pocahontas. Europeans regarded her as an Indian “princess.”
Thomas Jefferson was a great naturalist who might be considered the Father of Paleontology in North America. Virginia’s state fossil is even named for him!
Though midway between Maine and Florida, Virginia is generally considered part of the South. It was the chief battleground of the Civil War. It was at Appomattox that the war ended when General Robert Lee surrendered to General Ulysses Grant.
Virginia is divided into three regions. Rugged western Virginia belongs to the Appalachian Mountains. These highlands formed when North America collided with Africa and Europe millions of years ago, buckling the land. Today, this region is divided into the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Ridge and Valley region, and the Appalachian Plateau.
The Ridge and Valley region includes the Great Valley—a series of valleys separated by ridges, plateaus, and gaps. The largest and northernmost of these valleys is the fertile Shenandoah Valley. A highway known as the Blue Ridge Parkway links Shenandoah National Park with Great Smoky Mountains National Park far to the southwest in neighboring North Carolina and Tennessee.
East of the Appalachian highlands are the foothills, or the Piedmont. This plateau reaches heights of about 1,000 feet where it meets the Blue Ridge Mountains, sloping downward toward the sea.
The Fall Line marks the place where the Piedmont and Coastal Plain meet. It cuts across the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg, the James River at Richmond, the Appomattox River at Petersburg, and the Potomac River at the Great Falls.
Washington, D.C. is located a short distance downriver from the Great Falls. Thus, we have a Coastal Plain capital. In fact, tides surge up the Potomac 125 miles to Washington. Appropriately, many of the buildings and monuments in Washington, D.C. are made of marble and limestone, souvenirs of ancient seas.
Beyond the Fall Line, rivers become sluggish. They crawl across the flat lowlands of the Coastal Plain, or Tidewater region, eastwards. The rivers finally empty into broad estuaries in Chesapeake Bay. The Potomac, Rappahannock, York, and James rivers divide the Tidewater region into three peninsulas that stretch out into Chesapeake Bay. The peninsulas are interlaced with creeks and tidal swamps.
Rivers and swamps are common in much of the Coastal Plain, which is narrow in the north, but much wider in the south. In the southeast corner of the state is Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. George Washington and Patrick Henry both owned land in this area, which Washington surveyed.
On the east shore of Chesapeake Bay, Virginia shares Delmarva Peninsula—the VA is for Virginia—with Maryland and Delaware. This is the location of Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge. Its inhabitants include ponies said to be descended from Spanish ponies shipwrecked in the 1500s. They were made famous by the story Misty of Chincoteague.
At the southern tip of the peninsula is Eastern Shore of Virginia National Wildlife Refuge. In the fall, millions of birds stop here and wait for favorable winds to help them fly across Chesapeake Bay.
Tobacco, which is still grown in Virginia, was the most important crop in colonial Virginia. Wealthy Tidewater planters, many of whom owned slaves, played a leading role in the United States’ struggle for independence.
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism - 
