Jr ranger program: Historic Jamestowne

The Historic Triangle is made up of: Jamestown, Williamsburg and Yorktown, Virginia.   These areas are home to one of the first settlements in the 1600s, the Colonial Capital of Virginia set up to tour Revolutionary War times, and Yorktown, the place where the British lay down their arms in defeat.  It is an interesting road trip for anyone who likes history or wants to know more about this country.   The suggestion from the tour books is to do the tours in the order listed above.   We did not follow this, but can understand the logic behind the plan.   The idea to follow history, as it's happening, is great, especially for younger kids who can then "see" progress being made.    Jamestown has two sites to visit, the National Historic Park Historic Jamestowne and  the Jamestown Settlement, which has a tourist-y feel with houses to go through, boats to tour, and a Native American village to wander through.

At Historic Jamestowne,  the Junior Ranger Program is a paid program.  You pay $1 for the booklet and some change for the patch.  We voted to do the free Pocahontas scavenger hunt instead.

For Pocahontas, you scour the original site of Jamestown, looking for small placards with a name of something on them.  You put, said name, into the clue box to determine where Pocahontas went.  Anyone, (adult) who knows their history can put the answer in at the end, and then guess at the clue boxes... (we had a tough time finding one placard... reading descriptions of holes in the ground wasn't helpful!).  Jamestown itself is rather boring.  There are a couple of buildings to look at and many holes in the ground where archeology is happening.  There's are also a lot of grave-sites. Little man was curious to know how every.single.person. died, seriously.  Jamestown, historically, was not a booming success.  They lost most of their population the first year and given that many of them were not farmers nor use to working with their hands they were ill prepared for the winter.  Some even took to cannibalism when the going got tough, to the point where they all hopped on a ship ready to head back to England when another ship came to harbor with supplies.  Well, they ended up staying, had some fights with the locals, moved inland, and....Hello, Revolutionary War.  The museums at Jamestown are loaded with artifacts and interesting information, a movie too,(we skipped the movie).  The walk to the original site was nice.  The weather was in our favor.  We talked a lot about how hard life was for the pilgrims.  At the end of the scavenger hunt the boys got a backpack (a cinch top nylon) for determining that Pocahontas went to England.  I did not take any pictures of the holes in the ground.