Virginia State Map

Virginia

Virginia is a state in the South Atlantic region of the United States, with a considerable coastline along the Chesapeake Bay. The very south of the Delmarva Peninsula is actually a part of Virginia but not physically connected to the rest of the state.

Date first visited by Europeans: Spanish explorers sent by Hernando de Soto by the name of Juan de Villalobos and Francisco de Silvera entered the land that would become Virginia in 1540.

Date admitted to US: 1788

Date seceded: 1861

Date readmitted to United States: 1870

Capital: Richmond

Largest City: Virginia Beach

Terrain: The eastern portion of the state, including the bits of it on the Delmarva Peninsula, are a part of the Tidewater, a large, flat coastal plain. It is named because the level of the water there rises and falls with the tides.

Virginia goes from the Chesapeake Bay and coastal plain to the Blue Ridge Mountains (part of the Appalachian Mountains) in the western part of the state.

Area: 42,744 sq mi

Area Rank: 35th

Population: 6,549,352

Population rank: 12th

Electoral Votes: 13

Virginia is the state in which both the American Revolutionary and the American Civil War ended. British troops under General Charles Cornwallis surrendered in Yorkton to American and French troops, forcing Britain to negotiate an end to the war. Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to the Union general Ulysses S. Grant. It was not a complete surrender of the Confederacy, but triggered surrenders across the South.

The Virginia General Assembly is the oldest continuous law-making body founded by colonists in the New World. It was established in 1619 for the Commonwealth of Virginia. It was established in Jamestown, which was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas.