1. A state in the eastern United States; one of the original 13 colonies; one of the Confederate States in the American Civil War; Also called: Old Dominion, Old Dominion State.
2. One of the British colonies that formed the United States.
3. City in Illinois (USA).
4. City in Minnesota (USA); zip code 55792.
5. Village in Nebraska (USA); zip code 68458.
State in E US; nicknamed Old Dominion.
area 105,600 sq km/40,762 sq mi.
capital Richmond.
towns and cities Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Newport News, Hampton, Chesapeake, Portsmouth.
features Blue Ridge Mountains, with the Shenandoah national park; Luray Caverns; George Washington and Jefferson national forests; Jamestown Island, the site of the first permanent English settlement in North America, 1607); Colonial Williamsburg, a 173-acre historic area (re-creation started 1926, financed by John D Rockefeller Jr), with craft workers and costumed guides, and buildings including the capitol and the governor’s palace (1720), and the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Gallery.
Yorktown Battlefield, the site of the last major battle of the American Revolution, 1781; Alexandria Old Town (established 1749), with 18th- and 19th-century redbrick buildings, including the boyhood home of Robert E Lee (1795), Lee-Fendall House (1785), Christ Church, Gadsby's Tavern Museum (1770), George Washington National Masonic Memorial, and the Torpedo Factory Art Center; Fredericksburg, with a 40-block national historic district, including Kenmore (1750s), home of George Washington's sister, the Hugh Mercer Apothecary Shop, and the James Monroe Museum and Memorial Library; old Richmond, with the Virginia state capitol (designed by Thomas Jefferson 1785), the Richmond national battlefield park, the Museum and White House of the Confederacy, and Agecroft hall (a 15th-century house transported from Lancashire 1925).
Mount Vernon (1754), home of George Washington; Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's house at Charlottesville, built 1769–1809, full of Jefferson's inventions; Woodlawn (1800) with the Pope-Leighey House (1940, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright) in its grounds; plantation houses, including Shirley (1723, the oldest in Virginia), Berkeley (1726, the home of President William Henry Harrison), Carter's Grove Plantation (1750), and Oatlands (1803); George Washington's birthplace national monument, Wakefield; Civil War battlefields, including Manassas (or Bull Ring) national battlefield park, Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania national military park, and Petersburg national battlefield; Stratford Hall, the birthplace of Robert E Lee; Lexington, with the Lee Memorial Chapel and Museum, Virginia Military Institute (1839), Stonewall Jackson House, and the George C Marshall Museum; Appomattox Court House, the site of General Robert E Lee's surrender to General Ulysses S Grant 1865; Montpelier, home of President James Madison, and.
in the 20th century of the du Pont family; Staunton, with the Woodrow Wilson House, and the Museum of American Frontier Culture; Arlington national cemetery, the burial place of many US presidents, and veterans of 20th-century wars; Arlington House, the home of Robert E Lee; the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, (1693), the second oldest college in the US; the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, designed and founded 1819 by Thomas Jefferson; Booker T Washington national monument (his birthplace, and a museum of life under slavery); Virginia Air and Space Museum, Hampton; US Naval Base, Norfolk; Loudon County horse farms. More US presidents have come from Virginia than from any other state.
industries sweet potatoes, corn, tobacco, apples, peanuts, coal, ships, trucks, paper, chemicals, processed food, textiles.