📘 The land is striped

What you’ll learn

1. Mountain beltsRead mountain belts from the window.The land is striped; Five Virginias, one name.
2. Valley and capitalRead valley and capital from the window.Ships stopped here; One river walks the whole staircase.
3. Tidewater and bayRead tidewater and bay from the window.The mountains left; The war ended in a village.

Questions this course answers

Grounded in trusted sources

• Virginia Department of Energy, Geology and Mineral Resources — Physiographic and Geologic Provinces of Virginia: five physiographic provinces (Appalachian Plateau, Valley and Ridge, Blue Ridge, Piedmont, Coastal Plain); Appalachian Plateau the smallest, high elevations about 2,000 feet, sedimentary and flat-lying rocks, rich in coal and natural gas; Coastal Plain unconsolidated sediment, Chesapeake Bay Impact Structure created 35 million years earlier
• Virginia Department of Energy — About Us: Mount Rogers, highest point in Virginia at 5,729 feet, named for William Barton Rogers, first state geologist (survey created 1835)
• Virginia Museum of History & Culture — The Regions of Virginia: five physical regions Coastal Plain (Tidewater), Piedmont, Blue Ridge Mountains, Valley and Ridge, Appalachian Plateau; Coastal Plain in Virginia rises 300 feet above sea level; last Ice Age about 25,000 years ago the Coastal Plain extended fifty miles or more farther east; Piedmont Virginia’s largest region, rolling country that rises to 1,000 feet then doubles that height at the Blue Ridge foothills; Fall Line runs through Alexandria, Fredericksburg, Richmond, and Petersburg, west of which rivers are too shallow for deep-bottom ships; Blue Ridge rocks 1,000–1,600 million years old, oldest more than a billion years; southern Blue Ridge a broad relatively flat region holding Mount Rogers at 5,729 feet; Valley and Ridge part of the Great Valley from Quebec to Alabama, Virginia’s portion distinctive for size, parallel ridges 3,000–4,000 feet; Appalachian Plateau the smallest region, only three counties (Wise, Dickenson, and Buchanan)
• Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation — Virginia’s Physiographic Provinces: Coastal Plain bordered by the Fall Line west and the Atlantic, Chesapeake Bay and tributaries east; northern Coastal Plain three peninsulas between four major Chesapeake tributaries (Potomac, Rappahannock, York, James); Piedmont a gently rolling upland between Fall Line and Blue Ridge; Blue Ridge a narrow system of peaks in the north, widening south of Roanoke Gap into a broad plateau topped by Mount Rogers and Whitetop; Valley of Virginia includes the Shenandoah Valley and the James, Roanoke, New, Clinch, Powell and Holston valleys
• National Park Service — Travel James River, Virginia: at 340 miles the James is Virginia’s longest river and the 12th longest river in America that begins and ends in the same state
• National Park Service — A Short History of Jamestown / Virginia state page: on May 13, 1607, 104 English men and boys established Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America
• National Park Service — African Americans at Jamestown: late August 1619, “20 and odd” Africans arrived at Point Comfort aboard the English privateer White Lion, taken from the Portuguese slave ship San Juan Bautista
• National Park Service — Arrival of the First Africans in 1619 / Freedom’s Fortress (Fort Monroe National Monument): White Lion arrived at Old Point Comfort on 25 August 1619; Fort Monroe stands on a 565-acre peninsula known as Old Point Comfort

Every Wunder lesson is built from real, reputable sources — never invented.

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