Jamestown was the very first permanent English-speaking settlement in North America.
The colony came close to failing several times because the initial settlers arrived too late to plant crops and were, in any case, gentlemen and their servants who were unaccustomed to the hard work required for farming.
Eventually, Jamestown began to prosper not from food crop production but from the cultivation of tobacco.
The settlement was one of the first venues of the fraught relationship between English colonists and the Native Americans.
The account of Pocahontas and how she helped to form a temporary peace between her people, the Powhatan, has been somewhat misrepresented in the famous Disney movie but is nevertheless a moving story.
The site of Jamestown, which is a working archeology site, is now a popular tourist attraction.