In the beginning...
We're off for a week in colonial Virginia, where at least two foundation stones of America were laid in Jamestown, the English foothold, settled in the hopes of vast riches. The men who barely survived the first years of privation found no gold as promised by their sponsors, the Virginia Company of London. But they did find the country's first boom crop: tobacco, and thereby secured royal sponorship. It was also in Jamestown that democracy was first officially practiced in the new world, in the Virginia House of Burgesses.

I leave it to your opinion which of these firsts is the more enduring today...