COMMONWEALTH
of VIRGINIA

This category contains links of statewide interest in the Commonwealth of Virginia, the Old Dominion. Virginia is a Southern state, situated on the Atlantic Ocean south of Maryland and the District of Columbia, east of Kentucky and West Virginia, and north of North Carolina and Tennessee.



First settled in 1607, Virginia was the first permanent British settlement in North America, and named for the virgin queen, Elizabeth I. It became the tenth of the original 13 states to ratify the Constitution in 1788, its capital at Richmond.



Virginia is marked by a flat eastern tidewater region, home of the largest shipbuilding complex in the world, and a mountainous western area. It is historically prominent as the home of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, and as the chief battleground of the US Civil War, during which Richmond was the capital of the Confederacy.