Virginia has always been a thriving breeding ground for American history. Its illustrious colonial history started in 1607 with the establishment of the first English settlement at Jamestown. The first Thanksgiving was hosted in Virginia in 1619, and slavery was introduced to the colonies in Virginia the same year. Later, because to Patrick Henry’s famous “Give me liberty or give me death!” speech, which helped convince the Virginia House of Burgesses to commit soldiers, the Old Dominion State played a major part in the Revolutionary War. The War of Independence came to an end in Virginia in 1781, when Lord Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington at Yorktown.

Virginia is regarded as the most southern of the Mid-Atlantic states and the northernmost of the Southern states. It is the 35th largest country in terms of land and sea surface area, with 42,774 square miles. Furthermore, Virginia boasts 3,315 miles of coastline – including tidal inlets – making it the sixth longest in the US. The Potomac, Rappahannock, York, and James rivers cut through eastern Virginia’s coastal plain and pour into the vast Chesapeake Bay. To the west, the topography transitions from tidewater to the undulating Piedmont, which shares a western boundary with the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Ridge and Valley Province extends much further west of these mountains, along the Allegheny and Appalachian Plateaus.

Because of Virginia’s closeness to Washington, D.C., the federal government employs 4.6 percent of the state’s workforce (roughly 172,500 persons in 2013), the third highest percentage behind Hawaii and Maryland. Virginia is home to the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency, Quantico Marine Corps Base, and more than 25 additional Army, Navy, Coast Guard, and Air Force sites, in addition to bureaucratic employment in Washington, D.C. More than 265 aerospace businesses, including General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman, employ nearly 29,000 employees to support all of these military missions. It’s no surprise, therefore, that Virginia leads the nation in Department of Defense Prime Contracts, with more than $33 billion awarded to Virginia corporations in 2015.

Other significant industries include information technology, which employs more than 172,000 Virginians – the second greatest concentration of tech employees in the United States – and generates more than $41 billion in direct economic output. There are also a substantial number of nanotechnology, biotechnology, and technology manufacturing businesses, with computer chips being the state’s most profitable export. In 2015, Virginia had 19 Fortune 500 companies, including Freddie Mac, Capital One, AES, CarMax, Norfolk Southern, Computer Sciences, Hilton Worldwide Holdings, Advance Auto Parts, Genworth Financial, and Booz Allen Hamilton. Finally, traditional sectors such as mining and agriculture continue to be quite significant. Virginia is home to about 400 mines that harvest a variety of minerals such as cement, gravel, copper, arsenic, and iron. And, interestingly, farming still accounts for 33% of its total area, with over 45,000 farms covering over 8 million acres. Tobacco, tomatoes, peanuts, apples, grapes, cotton, turkeys, broiler chickens, and aquaculture goods like as oysters, among others, have an annual economic effect of $52 billion and employ more than 311,000 people, making agriculture the state’s major industry to this day.

Virginia has a diverse geography, ranging from the salt marshes of the tidelands to the fertile valleys of the centre to the mountains in the west. Cities such as Virginia Beach, Alexandria, Arlington, and Richmond provide arts and culture, but rural counties and pastoral villages appeal to those seeking a calmer or more private environment. Homes range from ancient mansions to rural cabins to fashionable condominiums, and Virginia’s thriving economy contributes to a thriving real estate market, particularly in Northern Virginia. In early 2016, the statewide median house value was $253,772 – about $70,000 greater than the national median – while the median rental price was $1,277.