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Virginia Beach, Virginia is a city that has become a popular tourist destination in recent years on account of its historical, scientific, and performing arts.
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The Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center (formerly the Virginia Marine Science Museum) is a popular aquarium near the oceanfront that features the 300,000-gallon Norfolk Canyon Aquarium, containing sand tiger, nurse and brown sharks, as well as sting rays and other large open-ocean dwellers. There is also a 70,000-gallon sea turtle aquarium, sea turtle hatchling laboratory, hands-on ocean exploration exhibits, jellyfish and octopus aquariums, and even a life-size model of a humpback whale. Other features include the Owls Creek salt marsh and a nature trail. (www.VirginiaAquarium.com)
The Farm Bureau Live (former The Verizon Wireless Amphitheater) features a wide variety of popular shows and concerts, ranging from Kenny Chesney to Gretchen Wilson to Coldplay to Ozzfest. The Sandler Center, a 1200-seat performing arts theatre, opened in the Virginia Beach Town Center in November 2007.
Virginia Beach is home to many sites of historical importance, and has 18 sites on the National Register of Historic Places. Such sites include the Adam Thoroughgood House (one of the oldest surviving colonial homes in Virginia), the Francis Land House (a 200-year-old plantation), the Cape Henry Lights and nearby Cape Henry Light Station (a second tower), Bayville Farm, DeWitt Cottage, Ferry Farm Plantation, Dr. John Miller-Masury House, Adam Keeling House, Old Donation Church, Pembroke Manor, Pleasant Hall, Shirley Hall (Devereaux House), Thomas Murray House, U.S. Coast Guard Station (Seatack), Upper Wolfsnare (Brick House Farm), Weblin House, and Wishart Boush House and Wolfsnare.
The history of one house represented a concise story of Lower Norfolk County's past. In 1649 the English couple William and Susannah Moseley migrated with their family to Lower Norfolk County from Rotterdam, the Netherlands, where he had been a steward of the English Court as a member of the Merchant Adventurers Company of London. They were a mature couple in their 40s and came with wealth to set up trade. On the Eastern Branch Elizabeth River, they built a mansion with Dutch-style gambrel roof, reflecting their years of residency and trade in Rotterdam. The house was first known as Greenwich. In the 18th century it was called Rolleston Hall, and was probably added to. The brick mansion stood for more than 200 years and burned down in the late 19th century. William Moseley was a commissioner of Lower Norfolk County from 1649 to his death in 1655. His son Arthur Moseley was elected to the House of Burgesses. Moseley descendants were active in Virginia and numerous other Southern states' political affairs. [1]
Before the Civil War, the mansion had passed out of the Moseley family and was owned by former governor Harold A. Wise of Virginia. He and his family left the house in 1861 during the American Civil War to seek refuge elsewhere. He became a Brigadier General for the Confederate Army. After the war, Wise attempted to reclaim the house while a prisoner on parole, but was refused by the Union command as he had taken up residence elsewhere in 1861. By the end of the Civil War, the Freedmen's Bureau had taken over the mansion and operated it as a school for 200 freedmen. [2]
The Edgar Cayce Hospital for Research and Enlightenment was established in Virginia Beach in 1928 with 60 beds. Cayce was a psychic from Kentucky who claimed healing abilities and made prophesies. Cayce resided in Virginia Beach until he died on January 3, 1945. His followers are still active in Virginia Beach. Atlantic University was opened by Cayce in 1930; it closed two years later but was re-opened in 1985. Atlantic University was originally intended for study of Cayce's readings and research on spiritual subjects.
Several films have been made in or near the city: Deep Impact (1998), The Dark Angel: Psycho Kickboxer (1997), Hearts in Atlantis (2001), Judges (2005), The Killing Kind (2004), Moving (2002), Navy SEALs (1990), The Satan Killer (1993) and Too Young the Hero (1988; TV film). Mission: Impossible III (2006) was filmed at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, which is connected to Virginia Beach.
Virginia Beach is home to 208 city parks, encompassing over 4,000 acres (16 km²), including neighborhood parks, community parks, district parks, and other open spaces. Each park is unique and offers something for everyone, from wide open spaces to playgrounds, picnic shelters, and ballfields.
Perhaps one of the most well-known parks is the Mount Trashmore Park, clearly visible from I-264. The park is 165 acres (668,000 m²). The mountain is 60 ft (18 m) high and over 800 ft (240 m) long, and was created by compacting layers of solid waste and clean soil. The park also features two lakes: Lake Windsor and Lake Trashmore. Lake Trashmore is stocked and may be fished.
Another major park in the city is Great Neck Park, a 70-acre (283,000 m²) park located in the Lynnhaven District. Facilities include five large group shelters, mini-shelters, family picnic tables and grills, three playgrounds, horseshoe pits, volleyball courts, vending machines, walking trails, four baseball fields, as well as a gazebo located at the end of a scenic walkway overlooking the Lynnhaven River.
The Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge, established in 1938, is an 8,000-acre (32 km²) fresh water refuge that borders the Atlantic Ocean on the east and Back Bay on the west. The barrier islands feature large sand dunes, maritime forests, fresh water marshes, ponds, ocean beach, and large impoundments for wintering wildfowl. It is managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
First Landing State Park and False Cape State Park are both located in coastal areas within the city's corporate limits as well.
Munden Point is a park located in the deep southern end of the city, which is known for being rural.
Additionally, the famous three-mile (5 km) boardwalk at the oceanfront is often packed with entertainment, outdoor cafes, concerts and people. The Neptune Festival is an outdoor festival held annually in September on the boardwalk.
The Naval Aviation Monument Park was formally dedicated on May 6, 2006, by the Hampton Roads Squadron of the Naval Aviation Foundation Association. Planned since 1997 in partnership with the City of Virginia Beach, the park features heroic-scale statuary and reliefs to tell the history of Naval Aviation. [3]
Virginia Beach has no major league professional sports teams or spectator sports. Since Norfolk contains the central business district of Hampton Roads, most of the major spectator sports are located there. While the Hampton Roads area has been recently considered as a viable prospect for major-league professional sports, and regional leaders have attempted to obtain Major League Baseball, NBA and NHL franchises in the recent past, no team has yet relocated to the area. It is considered (after Las Vegas) the largest metropolitan area in the country without a major professional sports team, being larger than a number of other metropolitan areas who currently host professional teams in the 4 major sports.
There are two soccer teams, the Hampton Roads Piranhas, a men's team in the USL Premier Development League, and a women's team by the same name in the W-League, the de facto top women's league after the suspension of the Women's United Soccer Association. The Piranhas play at the main stadium of the Virginia Beach Sportsplex, which also contains the central training site for the U.S. women's national field hockey team.
The city is also home to the East Coast Surfing Championships, an annual contest of more than 100 of the world's top professional surfers and an estimated 400 amateur surfers. This is North America's oldest surfing contest, and features combined cash prizes of $55,000.
There are also eleven golf courses open to the public in the city, as well as four country club layouts and 36 military holes at NAS Oceana's Aeropines course. Among the best-known public courses are Hell's Point Golf Club and Virginia Beach National, the latter of which hosts the Virginia Beach Open, a Nationwide Tour event, each April.
There are some great gyms in Virginia Beach for those that are competitive gymnasts. Ocean Tumblers and Excalibur are two of the gyms that host competitions throughout the year.
The North American Sand Soccer Championship is held once a year at the beach. The tournament includes the Pro/Am competition, which brings teams from all over the world to compete in the tournament.
Virginia Beach was the host of a Rock 'n' Roll Half Marathon each year on Labor Day weekend in conjunction with the American Music Festival from 2001 to 2021. [4] It was one of the largest Half Marathons in the world. The final 3 miles (4.8 km) were on the Virginia Beach boardwalk.
Virginia Beach's daily newspaper is the Virginian-Pilot . Other papers include the Port Folio Weekly , the New Journal and Guide , and the Hampton Roads Business Journal .
Virginia Wesleyan College publishes its own newspaper, Marlin Chronicles. [5] Hampton Roads Magazine serves as a bi-monthly regional magazine for Virginia Beach and the Hampton Roads area. [6] Hampton Roads Times serves as an online magazine for all the Hampton Roads cities and counties. Virginia Beach is served by a variety of radio stations on the AM and FM dials, with towers located around the Hampton Roads area. [7]
Virginia Beach is also served by several television stations. Major network television affiliates include:
| Channel | Callsign | Network(s) | Website |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | WTKR | (CBS) | http://www.wtkr.com/ |
| 10 | WAVY | (NBC) | http://www.wavy.com |
| 13 | WVEC | (ABC) | http://www.wvec.com/ |
| 15 | WHRO | (PBS) | http://www.whro.org/ |
| 27 | WGNT | (CW) | http://www.cw27.com/ Archived March 4, 2008, at the Wayback Machine |
| 33 | WTVZ | (MyNetworkTV) | http://www.mytvz.com |
| 43 | WVBT | (Fox) | https://web.archive.org/web/20080214194335/http://www.myfoxhamptonroads.com// |
| 49 | WPXV | (ION Television) | https://web.archive.org/web/20080215223141/http://www.ionline.tv// |
Virginia Beach residents also can receive independent stations, such as WSKY broadcasting on channel 4 from the Outer Banks of North Carolina and WGBS-LD broadcasting on channel 11 from Hampton. Virginia Beach is served by Cox Cable which provides LNC 5, a local 24-hour cable news television network and Verizon FiOS. DirecTV and Dish Network are also popular as an alternative to cable television in Virginia Beach.
Virginia Beach is an independent city located on the southeastern coast of Virginia, United States. The population was 459,470 at the 2020 census. Although mostly suburban in character, it is the most populous city in Virginia, fifth-most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic and the 42nd-most populous city in the U.S. Located on the Atlantic Ocean at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, Virginia Beach is a principal city in the Hampton Roads metropolitan area which has more than 1.8 million inhabitants and is the 37th-largest metropolitan area in the U.S.
Hampton Roads is the name of both a body of water in the United States that serves as a wide channel for the James, Nansemond, and Elizabeth rivers between Old Point Comfort and Sewell's Point where the Chesapeake Bay flows into the Atlantic Ocean, and the surrounding metropolitan region located in the southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina portions of the Tidewater Region.
The Chesapeake Bay Bridge–Tunnel is a 17.6-mile (28.3 km) bridge–tunnel that crosses the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay between Delmarva and Hampton Roads in the U.S. state of Virginia. It opened in 1964, replacing ferries that had operated since the 1930s. A major project to dualize its bridges was completed in 1999, and in 2017 a similar project was started to dualize one of its tunnels.
Interstate 264 (I-264) is an Interstate Highway in the US state of Virginia. It serves as the primary east–west highway through the South Hampton Roads region in southeastern Virginia. The route connects the central business districts of Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Norfolk, and Virginia Beach and serves as the most direct link between those cities and the resort beaches along Virginia's Atlantic coast.
County of Princess Anne is a former county in the British Colony of Virginia and the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States, first incorporated in 1691. The county was merged into the city of Virginia Beach on January 1, 1963, ceasing to exist.
Hampton Roads Transit (HRT), incorporated on October 1, 1999, began through the voluntary merger of PENTRAN on the Virginia Peninsula and TRT in South Hampton Roads and currently serves over 22 million annual passengers within its 369-square-mile (960 km2) service area around Hampton Roads. The purpose of the HRT is to provide reliable and efficient transportation service and facilities to the Hampton Roads community. In 2023, the system had a ridership of 7,263,900, or about 23,400 per weekday as of the fourth quarter of 2023.
The Norwegian Lady Statues are located in the sister cities of Moss, a coastal town and municipality in the county of Østfold, Norway, and at the Oceanfront (boardwalk) in the coastal resort city of Virginia Beach, Virginia in the United States. They commemorate the lives lost in the 1891 shipwreck of the Norwegian barque Dictator off the coast of Virginia Beach and the lifesaving efforts of the community.
Seatack, Virginia is a historic neighborhood and community borough of Virginia Beach, Virginia, that was located in what used to be Princess Anne County, and is now part of the Oceanfront resort strip and adjacent area of the independent city of Virginia Beach. The Seatack community of Virginia Beach includes an area inland from the resort strip along present-day Virginia Beach Boulevard. Seatack Elementary School is located nearby on Birdneck Road. The 1903 Seatack Station of the United States Lifesaving Service is now the Virginia Beach Surf & Rescue Museum at 24th street adjacent to the oceanfront boardwalk.
Virginia Beach Boulevard is a major connector highway which carries U.S. Route 58 most of its length and extends from the downtown area of Norfolk to the Oceanfront area of Virginia Beach, passing through the newly developed New Urbanist Town Center development of the latter as it links the two independent cities in the South Hampton Roads subregion of the Hampton Roads region in southeastern Virginia.
The Lynnhaven River is a tidal estuary located in the independent city of Virginia Beach, Virginia, in the United States, and flows into the Chesapeake Bay west of Cape Henry at Lynnhaven Inlet, beyond which is Lynnhaven Roads. It has a small, developed watershed covering 64 square miles (170 km2), terminating at Lynnhaven Bay. It was once famous along the East Coast of the United States for its oysters, which declined through pollution and runoff. It is now being restored by the Lynnhaven River Now restoration project based out of the Brock Environmental Center. A proposed comprehensive project for ecosystem restoration of the Lynnhaven River Basin is currently under consideration by the United States Congress.
U.S. Route 60 (US 60) in the Commonwealth of Virginia runs 303 miles (488 km) west to east through the central part of the state, generally close to and paralleling the Interstate 64 corridor, except for the crossing of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and in the South Hampton Roads area.
State Route 165 is a primary state highway in the U.S. state of Virginia. The state highway runs 39.75 miles (63.97 km) from U.S. Route 17 Business in Chesapeake north to SR 337 in Norfolk. SR 165 is a C-shaped route that connects Chesapeake and Norfolk in the Hampton Roads metropolitan area indirectly via Virginia Beach. The highway's east–west segment connects the Chesapeake communities of Deep Creek and Great Bridge with the Princess Anne part of Virginia Beach. SR 165's northwest–southeast portion connects the Princess Anne area with Virginia Beach's Salem and Kempsville communities and with Norfolk. Within Norfolk, the state highway parallels Interstate 64 (I-64) while passing through the eastern and northern areas of the city near Norfolk International Airport and Naval Station Norfolk. Much of SR 165 is a multi-lane divided highway, but there are significant two-lane stretches in all three of the independent cities the highway serves.
The history of Virginia Beach, Virginia, goes back to the Native Americans who lived in the area for thousands of years before the English colonists landed at Cape Henry in April 1607 and established their first permanent settlement at Jamestown a few weeks later. The Colonial Virginia period extended until 1776 and the American Revolution, and the area has been part of the Commonwealth of Virginia ever since.
The history of Norfolk, Virginia as a modern settlement begins in 1636. The city was named after the English county of Norfolk and was formally incorporated in 1736. The city was burned by orders of the outgoing Virginia governor Lord Dunmore in 1776 during the second year of the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), although it was soon rebuilt.
The Tide is a 7.4 mi (12 km) light rail line in Norfolk, Virginia, United States, owned and operated by Hampton Roads Transit (HRT). It connects Eastern Virginia Medical School, downtown Norfolk, Norfolk State University, and Newtown Road. Service began on August 19, 2011, making it the first light rail system in Virginia. Fares match local bus fares and the line accepts HRT's GO Passes. Trains generally run every 15 minutes, increasing to every 10 minutes during peak periods and every 30 minutes during early mornings and late evenings. In 2023, the system had a ridership of 771,500, or about 2,500 per weekday as of the fourth quarter of 2023.
Virginia Beach, Virginia's development is tied to the establishment of a transportation infrastructure that allowed access to the Atlantic shoreline.
Ferry Plantation House, or Old Donation Farm, Ferry Farm, Walke Manor House, is a brick house in the neighborhood of Old Donation Farm in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The site dates back to 1642 when Savill Gaskin started the second ferry service in Hampton Roads to carry passengers on the Lynnhaven River to the nearby county courthouse and to visit plantations along the waterway. A cannon was used to signal the ferry, which had 11 total stops along the river. The first ferry service was started nearby by Adam Thoroughgood.
Virginia Beach Oceanfront refers to the three mile (4.8 km) long boardwalk area in South East Virginia Beach on the Atlantic Coast. It is located North of the Rudee Inlet Bridge and includes the boardwalk itself, Atlantic Avenue, and Pacific Avenue. Virginia Beach is a resort city, and the Oceanfront is a primary tourist attraction. The boardwalk, substantially updated in 1988, is a concrete path linking forty hotels and other attractions via pedestrian walkway and separated bike path -- which in turn connects to nearby trails and surface streets.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Norfolk, Virginia, United States.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Virginia Beach, Virginia, USA.
