Cape Henry

Cape Henry is a prominent cape situated at the northeastern corner of Virginia Beach, Virginia, at the southern entrance to Chesapeake Bay. It lies on the Atlantic shore and forms the southern boundary of the entrance to the long estuary of the Chesapeake Bay. Together with Cape Charles to the north, Cape Henry forms the Virginia Capes, both named in 1607 for sons of King James I of England — Cape Henry for his eldest son Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, and Cape Charles for his younger son Charles, Duke of York, later King Charles I. Few geographic points in the United States carry as dense a concentration of historical significance: the cape was the first landfall of English settlers bound for Jamestown, the site of two pivotal Revolutionary War naval battles, and home to the first lighthouse authorized and completed by the federal government. Today, Cape Henry falls within the boundaries of Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek–Fort Story and is adjacent to First Landing State Park, drawing visitors, historians, and military personnel alike.

Geography and Setting

Cape Henry is a promontory at the southern entrance to Chesapeake Bay, on the Atlantic coast in the northeast corner of the city of Virginia Beach, in southeastern Virginia. The cape's position at the junction of the bay's mouth and the open Atlantic has made it a landmark for mariners for centuries, offering deep-water anchorage, variable tide conditions, dunes, beaches, surf, maritime forest, and open land in close proximity.

The cape's distinctive landscape is the product of thousands of years of geological change. Research by Old Dominion University found that the sand dunes at Cape Henry began appearing approximately 5,000 years ago — making them older than the ancient Egyptian pyramids — shaped by erosion and sea level rise resulting from melting glaciers after the last ice age ended around 11,000 years ago. Larger dunes, reaching heights of approximately 100 feet, formed later in the area and became prominent navigational landmarks to mariners approaching from the Atlantic during the Colonial era, serving as a reliable visual indicator of the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.

Cape Henry is also the northernmost east coast location where subtropical and temperate plants can be found growing together — a botanical distinction recognized by federal authorities. In 1965, the cape's natural area was included in the National Register of Natural Landmarks in recognition of this distinction as the northernmost location on the East Coast where subtropical and temperate plant communities grow together.

The First Landing of 1607

Cape Henry holds an unrivaled place in American colonial history as the site of the first landfall made by the English settlers who would go on to found Jamestown. The cape was named on April 26, 1607, in honor of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, the heir-apparent to the throne of England, by an expedition of the London Company branch of the Virginia Company headed by Captain Christopher Newport. After a voyage of 144 days from England, Cape Henry was their first landfall — an event that has come to be called "The First Landing."

The group consisted of 105 men and boys who set sail from England aboard three ships: the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery. Funded and dispatched by the Virginia Company, they carried instructions to build a secure settlement, search for gold, and seek a water route to the Pacific Ocean. Captain Newport came ashore with approximately 20 to 30 men to scout the area. The arrival was not entirely peaceful: that evening, Native peoples defending their land fired arrows at the colonists, who fired their pistols in return.

Upon touching the shore of the New World on April 26, 1607 — thirteen years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock — the settlers conducted a prayer service and erected a wooden cross on the newly named Cape Henry shore, both in gratitude to God and to affirm England's claim to the site. Three days after landing, the colonists formally named the cape in honor of Prince Henry and then resumed their voyage northward, seeking a sheltered location to establish a fort. They founded their permanent settlement at Jamestown two weeks later, in May 1607. A stone cross, erected in 1935 by the Daughters of the American Colonists, stands on the quarter-acre memorial site today. The memorial is part of Colonial National Historical Park and is surrounded by Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek–Fort Story.

The Cape Henry Lighthouses

The Old Cape Henry Lighthouse, commanding the entrance to Hampton Roads, was the first lighthouse authorized, fully completed, and lighted by the newly organized federal government of the United States — and the first federal public works project completed under the new Constitution. The bid for its construction was approved by President George Washington.

The story of the lighthouse's construction is closely tied to the birth of the American republic itself. During the first session of the First United States Congress in 1789, Jacob Wray, the collector of customs at Hampton, made a plea to the newly appointed Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, that the unlit shores of Cape Henry — which had claimed 57 maritime vessels — needed to be promptly addressed. Hamilton contracted the project with John McComb, Jr., the designer of the planned presidential residence. Using Aquia stone that remained on-site from a failed wartime attempt to build a lighthouse, as well as Rappahannock freestone, McComb's plans called for an octagonal structure with three windows on the east face and four on the west, standing 90 feet above the water table at a projected cost of $17,700 — roughly $435,000 in today's money.

Put into operation in October 1792, the tapered octagonal lighthouse, faced with hammer-dressed sandstone ashlar, was the first of three lighthouses designed and built by McComb. The completion of the Cape Henry Lighthouse marked the first federal public works project of the new United States government to be fulfilled, and it quickly became an important fixture for the region's maritime enterprises and military navigation.

By the latter half of the nineteenth century, the original structure had developed structural cracks serious enough to warrant replacement. A new lighthouse was constructed adjacent to the old one and completed in 1881. The distinctive black-and-white-striped "New" Cape Henry Lighthouse, built in 1881, remains an active aid to navigation but is closed to the public. The old lighthouse, meanwhile, was deeded to Preservation Virginia by an act of Congress in 1930, and remains open to visitors. Preservation Virginia members had earlier placed a commemorative tablet on the tower in 1896, marking the site as the location of the First Landing of 1607. Visitors to the old lighthouse climb 191 steps to reach the top, where both the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean are visible simultaneously. Today, both lighthouses are surrounded by Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek–Fort Story.

The Battle of the Capes

Cape Henry and the waters immediately offshore were the stage for two significant naval engagements during the American Revolutionary War, both of which had lasting consequences for the outcome of the conflict.

The first engagement, the Battle of Cape Henry, took place on March 16, 1781. The battle occurred just outside the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay off Cape Henry, between a French fleet of eight ships-of-the-line and one frigate under Admiral Charles Destouches and British forces under Vice Admiral Mariot Arbuthnot. Though the French inflicted far greater damage on the British fleet, Destouches declined to press his advantage. Rather than pursue the injured British ships and renew the attack, he returned to his base at Newport, Rhode Island, to make repairs, allowing the British to sail into the Chesapeake Bay. The result was a tactical opportunity lost that would be revisited months later.

The far more decisive engagement was the Battle of the Chesapeake, fought on September 5, 1781 — also known as the Battle of the Virginia Capes or the Battle of the Capes. French Admiral François Joseph Paul, Comte de Grasse, commanded a fleet of thirty-seven ships that clashed with nineteen British ships under Admiral Thomas Graves at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Though the engagement lasted only a few hours and ended without a clear tactical victory for either side, the strategic outcome was unambiguous: the French gained control of the bay, cutting off British General Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown from any resupply or reinforcement by sea. Deciding not to attack the French fleet again, Admiral Graves withdrew northward to New York for repairs, effectively ceding the Chesapeake to de Grasse and sealing Cornwallis's fate. On October 19, 1781, Cornwallis surrendered his army to Washington at Yorktown. Thus the English colonial presence which had begun at Jamestown in 1607 was effectively ended at Yorktown in 1781, and the waters off Cape Henry had played a decisive role in both acts of that history.

At the Battle of the Virginia Capes Monument within Fort Story, a statue of Admiral de Grasse commemorates the sea battle that prevented British relief of Cornwallis and effectively determined the outcome of the American Revolutionary War.

First Landing State Park

Directly adjacent to Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek–Fort Story, First Landing State Park preserves the natural landscape of Cape Henry and commemorates the colonial history of the site. The name "First Landing" commemorates the 1607 landing of the Virginia Company on Cape Henry — the group of settlers that made landfall here eventually moved west and established Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America.

Development of the park began in 1933 through the work of the Civilian Conservation Corps on 1,060 acres of donated land, with the majority of the labor performed by Black American men. The park opened on June 15, 1936, under the name Seashore State Park, and was renamed First Landing State Park in 1997 to reflect its heritage as the first landing place of the Virginia Company colonists.

First Landing State Park encompasses 2,888 acres and features 19 miles of trails, a boat launch, cabins, picnic areas, and opportunities for boating, swimming, hiking, and biking. The park holds the distinction of being the northernmost east coast location where subtropical and temperate plants grow together, a combination visible throughout its diverse ecosystems — from cypress swamp to coastal dune. Ecologically, the park is a designated National Natural Landmark. It is consistently ranked among Virginia's most visited state parks.

Visitors planning to hike the park's trail system should be aware that conditions vary considerably with weather and tidal patterns. The main hard-packed trails generally drain well after rainfall, while the sandy side trails, though slower to show standing water, can flood when high tides combine with sustained onshore winds — a condition that can occur even without significant rainfall. Checking tidal forecasts for the lower Chesapeake Bay is advisable when planning visits after storm systems move through the region.

Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek–Fort Story and Modern Military Presence

Much of Cape Henry today lies within the boundaries of Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek–Fort Story (JEBLCFS), an active United States military installation. Located at the entrance of the Chesapeake Bay in the independent city of Virginia Beach, the base occupies terrain that combines open beach, maritime forest, deep-water anchorage,