For America’s 250th birthday, Washington Examiner is taking you to Virginia’s Historic Triangle, where the story of our nation began. From the Jamestown settlement, the first permanent English colony in America; to the Yorktown battlefield, where the fight for independence was won; to Colonial Williamsburg, where America’s founding principles were debated and shaped. Step back in time to explore the places and events that forged our nation.

JAMESTOWN, Virginia — As Washington, D.C., prepares to mark America’s 250th birthday and celebrate where the nation is today, another, older anniversary is quietly unfolding on the banks of the James River. The Washington Examiner visited Jamestown, the site of the first permanent English settlement in North America. It’s a story that began more than a century and a half before the Founders signed the Declaration of Independence.