We begin with Jamestown. As we learned in school, in 1607 the first permanent English settlement was founded in North America here at Jamestown. In 1957, Jamestown celebrated its 350th anniversary and Virginia celebrated the event with an 8-month-long "Jamestown Festival." During this time over a million visitors came to Jamestown, including then-Vice President Richard Nixon and Queen Elizabeth II.
Although the events surrounding the 1957 celebrations did not fully take into account the perspectives of the Native Americans and African Americans, they still made many lasting historical contributions to the local history and infrastructure. Organizers worked on a variety of projects including "microfilming colonial documents from England, publishing a series of thirty-two historical booklets about the colony written by prominent scholars, (and) excavating part of the town on Jamestown Island." The state also built the "Jamestown Festival Park," now known as the Jamestown Settlement, a living-history museum that included recreations of the three ships that brought the colonists to the island, James Fort, and a Native American village. This park created a "detailed presentation of the past, demonstrating everyday aspects of colonial life such as what people ate, how they dressed, the types of homes they lived in, and crops they grew."
The facilities were recently updated for the 400th anniversary in 2007. The Jamestown Settlement and Historic Jamestowne Island National Park are both open to the public and show that the efforts put into the parks in the mid-century were not in vain. By building upon what was created in the 1950s, both museums now better reflect the views of all of Jamestown's residents and help visitors to understand what life was like in the 17th century.
Sources:
www.wikipedia.com
www.encyclopediavirginia.org
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