Colonial Williamsburg, Part One: Introduction and the Hopes Plantation |

It is a very weary and happy time travel who posts tonight! My day in Colonial Williamsburg was much too full to do it justice in just one post, so I will be breaking it up into several.

Williamsburg is known as the Revolutionary City. It was the first capital of Virginia and the centre of political activity that would lead to the United States declaring its independence from England.

The historical part of the city, Colonial Williamsburg, is a huge living history museum set circa 1774, just before the American Revolution and the ratification of the Declaration of Independence. I’ll get a little more into some of the history as I work my way through the exhibits.

While Colonial Williamsburg is a living history museum, it is not like so many others I have visited where the costumed interpreters play a part and pretend they are actually living in that era. While they may take on the persona of an 18th-century whatever, they are still their 21st century selves and can answer questions as such.

In order to visit all the exhibits, you must purchase a ticket, which is $39.95 for one day. I got lucky and was able to buy my ticket through Groupon for $19.95. But, spoiler, $39.95 is a bargain!

My tips for Colonial Williamsburg: wear comfortable shoes, bring your own water and a picnic, don’t think you’ll find one-of-a-kind souvenirs, and if you absolutely want to pay huge prices for dinner, reserve very early to eat at one of the taverns. Yes, much of Colonial Williamsburg is a giant tourist trap, but one that is still well worth doing!

Plan a lot of time to visit Colonial Williamsburg properly. I arrived at 9AM and by noon I hadn’t even set foot in the core of the city yet! Many visitable buildings include tours of 20 to 45 minutes in duration and you can easily spend 10 to 15 minutes in each of the other ones watching demonstrations. I decided to work my way through the city, devote myself wholly to the activity in which I was engaged, and not bemoan missing anything when the day ended.

One interpreter gave me a valuable tip. While the town buildings and tours close at 5PM, the museum closes at 7PM. A good way to organize you day is to travel clockwise around the city, finish with the museum, and then hop on the free shuttle to get back to the Visitors’ Centre.

I don’t take notes, so the following pictures provide information I remember, but in no way encompass the whole of what I learned during my visit. You’ll just have to come to Colonial Williamsburg one day!

: Colonial Williamsburg Visitors’ Centre: get your tickets and map here

: If you take the shuttle from the Visitors’ Centre, you miss the Hopes Plantation, an imagined place that represents a typical middle class farm. Most Virginians lived like this.

: The farm is several acres large and has many out buildings including a kitchen, smokehouse, tobacco shed, and slave quarters. The cash crops were tobacco, wheat, and corn.

: Mmm, ham.

: I saw stairs like these at the Pamplin Historical Park. They are still scary!

: Period kitchen.

: There were still veggies in the garden, but these are rather frosty.

: Hot peppers.

: The shingles are made of cypress and the resulting roof can last 50 years!

: This man is making shingles.

: He has a little machine for holding the shingle, which he then planes and sizes. He can make 100 per day.

: More shingle shaping.

: She’s making pegs to hold joints.

: He’s making joints.

: There is no rock in Virginia, so unless folks could afford brick, their houses had no foundations. Most buildings were not considered permanent as they would rot out within a generation. So they would have plank roofs rather than shingle ones. No sense spending time and money on a structure that won’t last.

: Slave quarters. There could be 12 people crammed into a tiny cabin with a dirt floor. The top floor was used for storage.

: I crossed a number of these tunnels with a babbling brook by the sidewalk.

: Looking towards town.

: There is a little orientation building between the plantation and the governor’s palace. Inside, you can see the Frenchman’s map, the only surviving period survey of Colonial Williamsburg, and which allowed the museum to be laid out much as the town was. The French text says: “Map of the city of Williamsburg and the surrounding area, Virginia, America. 11th May, 1786. Surveyed on foot.”