The Jamestown Ter-Centennial Exposition was held in Norfolk from April 26 to November 30, 1907, and celebrated the three hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Jamestown colony by settlers from England. It was one in a series of large fairs and expositions held across the United States that began with the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, which commemorated the four hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s landing in America. Such events were designed as international showcases for arts and technology and were often linked to important anniversaries in order to highlight the notion of historical “progress.” More than its predecessors, the Jamestown exhibition emphasized athletics and the military, the latter drawing protests. It was visited by U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt, the writer Mark Twain, the educator Booker T. Washington, dignitaries from more than twenty nations, and a number of foreign naval ships. Although an exhibit on African Americans was considered to be particularly successful, the event was a financial fiasco, plagued by poor management, overly ambitious plans, insufficient resources, and tight deadlines. The naval display was impressive enough, however, that in 1917 the exposition’s site became home to Naval Air Station Hampton Roads (later Naval Station Norfolk).
Further Reading:
Taylor, Robert. “The Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition of 1907,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 65:2 (1957): 169-208.
This Vignette Provided By
Brendan Wolfe, associate editor of Encyclopedia Virginia.
