Hello and welcome to a history of the United States. Episode 84. Go West.

One of the things I have to emphasise about Colonial Virginia at 1700 is how small it really was.

It was small. Very small. It was only a fraction of the size of modern Virginia, never mind the size of the state

before West Virginia broke off in the Civil War. We're going to be talking a lot about the geography

of Virginia for the beginning of this episode, so we'll start things off with the breakdown of the

state. We can break the state of Virginia into five

areas. The tide water, the Piedmont, the Blue Ridge Mountains, the ridge and valley region,

and the Cumberland Plateau, sometimes called the Appalachian Plateau. Now, let's talk about them in a bit more detail. Firstly we have the

tidewater. The tide water is part of the Atlantic coastal plain, a broad area of land which

stretches from the New England Bites in the north, all the way down the Atlantic seaboard, covering

most of Georgia and all of Florida.

It is an area usually 50 to 100 kilometres apart the ocean, and is characterised by low, wet land.

The average elevation of the area is less than 900 metres above sea level, and it contains lots of rivers,

as well as areas of swamp and marsh. It is, in short, an area perfect for agriculture.

The tide water, specifically, covers eastern Virginia as well as areas of Maryland and North Carolina.

It is split into two types of geography, low swamp and tidal marsh.

And then a higher area, which was very well suited to agriculture.

It is the area around the Chesapeake and the major rivers, such as the Potomac, the Rappahannock,

the James and the York, which made several peninsulas in the bay.

As I'm sure you've noticed by now, the tide water is basically the only area we've covered so far.

I've mentioned the Piedmont once or twice, which was on the other side of the foreline,

but really it's only been this very narrow area of Virginia that was Virginia.

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