SMETHPORT — Officials of the McKean County Historical Society have announced that seating is still available for the organization’s sixth historical bus trip which is to Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown Island, Jamestown Settlement and Yorktown Battlefield on April 25-28.
The area is known as the “Historic Triangle of Virginia,” the three historic communities on the peninsula and bounded by the York River on the north and the James River on the south.
This area is now home to many restored attractions, reflecting early American history. Jamestown is where it all began. In 1607, 13 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, a group of more than 100 English citizens settled on the left bank of the James River, a site safe from Spanish ships and about 60 miles from the mouth of the Chesapeake River. Historic Jamestown on Jamestown Island is the actual historic and archaeological location where those first settlers landed. Recent research shows that those first settlers arrived at the worst possible time, in the middle of the most devastating drought in 700 years that occurred between 1606-12.That severe dry spell affected the settlers’ ability to produce food and obtain safe drinking water. The period of 1609-10 was known as “The Starving Time.”
Despite these and other obstacles, such as the brief abandonment of the settlement in 1610, Jamestown became the first permanent British settlement in North America.
At the Yorktown Battlefield visitors see the area where Gen. George Washington and his army, aided by French forces, surrounded British General Lord Charles Cornwallis and the British army on the peninsula. A French fleet drove off the British fleet attempting to bring help to the Redcoats. Surrounded by land and sea, the British surrendered, ending the Revolutionary War’s last major military engagement.
Colonial Williamsburg is now a living history museum, where the historic area features restored buildings from the 17th and 19th centuries, and costumed employees work and dress as people did in the colonial and Revolutionary War eras.
Williamsburg was the capital of colonial Virginia.
The McKean County Historical Society has again arranged transportation with Covered Wagon
Tours. Fifty seats will be available on a first come, first served basis, with a $50 deposit due by
Dec. 31. Final payment is due by Feb. 15, 2017. The group will stay at the Best Western in Williamsburg.
For more information, contact Flo Carter at the Old Jail Museum in Smethport at 814-887-5142.
