title: The Lion King

text: On October 7, 2003, the film was re-released on VHS and released on DVD for the first time, titled "The Lion King: Platinum Edition", as part of Disney's Platinum Edition line of DVDs. The DVD release featured two versions of the film on the first disc, a remastered version created for the 2002 IMAX release and an edited version of the IMAX release purporting to be the original 1994 theatrical version. A second disc, with bonus features, was also included in the DVD release. The film's soundtrack was provided both in its original Dolby 5.1 track and in a new Disney Enhanced Home Theater Mix, making this one of the first Disney DVDs so equipped. This THX certified two-disc DVD release also contains several games, Timon and Pumbaa's Virtual Safari, deleted scenes, music videos and other bonus features. By means of seamless branching, the film could be viewed either with or without a newly created scene – a short conversation in the film replaced with a complete song ("The Morning Report"). A Special Collector's Gift Set was also released, containing the DVD set, five exclusive lithographed character portraits (new sketches created and signed by the original character animators), and an introductory book entitled "The Journey". The Platinum Edition of "The Lion King" featured changes made to the film during its IMAX re-release, including re-drawn crocodiles in the "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" sequence as well as other alterations. More than two million copies of the Platinum Edition DVD and VHS units were sold on the first day of release. A DVD box set of the three "The Lion King" films (in two-disc Special Edition formats) was released on December 6, 2004. In January 2005, the film, along with the sequels, went back into moratorium. The DVD releases have sold a total of 11.9million units and grossed .


title: The Lion King

text: Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released the Diamond Edition of "The Lion King" on October 4, 2011. This marks the first time that the film has been released in high-definition Blu-ray and on Blu-ray 3D. The initial release was produced in three different packages: a two-disc version with Blu-ray and DVD; a four-disc version with Blu-ray, DVD, Blu-ray 3D, and digital copy; and an eight-disc box set that also includes the sequels "" and "The Lion King 1½". A standalone single-disc DVD release also followed on November 15, 2011. The Diamond Edition topped the Blu-ray charts with over 1.5 million copies sold. The film sold 3.83 million Blu-ray units in total, leading to a $101.14 million income.


title: The Lion King

text: "The Lion King" was once again released to home media as part of the "Walt Disney Signature Collection" first released on Digital HD on August 15, 2017, and on Blu-ray and DVD on August 29, 2017.


title: The Lion King

text: "The Lion King" grossed $422.8 million in North America and $545.7 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $968.5 million. After its initial run, having earned $763.4 million, it ranked as the highest-grossing animated film of all time, the highest-grossing film of Walt Disney Animation Studios, and the highest-grossing film of 1994. It was the second-highest-grossing film of all time, behind "Jurassic Park" (1993). The film remained as the second-highest-grossing film until the spot was taken by "Independence Day" (1996) just two years later.


title: The Lion King

text: It held the record for the highest-grossing animated feature film (in North America, outside North America, and worldwide) until it was surpassed by the computer-animated "Finding Nemo" (2003). With the earnings of the 3D run, "The Lion King" surpassed all the aforementioned films but "Toy Story 3" (2010) to rank as the second-highest-grossing animated film worldwide—later dropping to ninth, and then tenth, surpassed by its photorealistic CGI remake counterpart—and it remains the highest-grossing hand-drawn animated film. It is also the biggest animated movie of the last 50 years in terms of estimated attendance. "The Lion King" was also the highest-grossing G-rated film in the United States from 1994 to 2003 and again from 2011 to 2019 until its total was surpassed by the computer-animated "Toy Story 4" (2019) (unadjusted for inflation).


title: The Lion King

text: During the first two days of limited release in two theaters, "The Lion King" grossed $622,277, and for the weekend it earned nearly $1.6 million, placing the film in tenth place at the box office. The average of $793,377 per theater stands as the largest ever achieved during a weekend, and it was the highest-grossing opening weekend on under 50 screens, beating the record set by "Star Wars" (1977) from 43 screens. The film grossed nearly $3.8 million from the two theaters in just 10 days.


title: The Lion King

text: When it opened wide, "The Lion King" grossed $40.9 million—which at the time was the fourth biggest opening weekend ever and the highest sum for a Disney film—to top the weekend box office. It displaced the previous box office champion "Wolf". At that time, it easily topped the previous biggest 1994 opening, which was the $37.2 million earned by "The Flintstones" during the four-day Memorial Day weekend. The film also produced the third-highest opening weekend gross of any film, trailing only behind "Jurassic Park" (1993) and "Batman Returns" (1992). For five years, the film held the record for having the highest opening weekend for an animated film until it was surpassed by "Toy Story 2" (1999). It remained the number-one box office film for two weeks until it was displaced by "Forrest Gump", followed by "True Lies" the week after.


title: The Lion King

text: In September 1994, Disney pulled the film from movie theaters and announced it would be re-released during Thanksgiving in order to take advantage of the holiday season. At the time, the film had earned $267 million in the United States. Following its re-release, by March 1995, it had grossed $312.9 million, being the highest-grossing 1994 film in the United States and Canada, but was soon surpassed by "Forrest Gump". Box Office Mojo estimates that the film sold over 74 million tickets in the US in its initial theatrical run, equivalent to $812.1 million adjusted for inflation in 2018.


title: The Lion King

text: Internationally, the film grossed $455.8 million during its initial run, for a worldwide total of $768.6 million. It had record openings in Sweden and Denmark.


title: The Lion King

text: The film was re-issued on December 25, 2002, for IMAX and large-format theaters. Don Hahn explained that eight years after "The Lion King" had its original release, "there was a whole new generation of kids who haven't really seen it, particularly on the big screen." Given the film had already been digitally archived during production, the restoration process was easier, while also providing many scenes with enhancements that covered up original deficiencies. An enhanced sound mix was also provided to, as Hahn explained, "make the audience feel like they're in the middle of the movie." On its first weekend, "The Lion King" made $2.7 million from 66 locations, a $27,664 per theater average. This run ended with $15.7 million on May 30, 2003.


title: The Lion King

text: In 2011, "The Lion King" was converted to 3D for a two-week limited theatrical re-issue and subsequent 3D Blu-ray release. The film opened at the number one spot on Friday, September 16, 2011, with $8.9 million and finished the weekend with $30.2 million, ranking number one at the box office. This made "The Lion King" the first re-issue release to earn the number-one slot at the American weekend box office since the re-issue of "Return of the Jedi" (1983) in March 1997. The film also achieved the fourth-highest September opening weekend of all time. It held off very well on its second weekend, again earning first place at the box office with a 27 percent decline to $21.9 million. Most box-office observers had expected the film to fall about 50 percent in its second weekend and were also expecting "Moneyball" (2011) to be at first place.


title: The Lion King

text: After its initial box-office success, many theaters decided to continue to show the film for more than two weeks, even though its 3D Blu-ray release was scheduled for two-and-a-half weeks after its theatrical release. In North America, the 3D re-release ended its run in theaters on January 12, 2012, with a gross of $94.2 million. Outside North America, it earned $83.4 million. The successful 3D re-release of "The Lion King" made Disney and Pixar plan 3D theatrical re-releases of "Beauty and the Beast", "Finding Nemo" (2003), "Monsters, Inc." (2001), and "The Little Mermaid" (1989) during 2012 and 2013. However, none of the re-releases of the first three films achieved the enormous success of "The Lion King 3D" and the theatrical re-release of "The Little Mermaid" was ultimately cancelled. In 2012, Ray Subers of Box Office Mojo wrote that the reason why the 3D version of "The Lion King" succeeded was because, "the notion of a 3D re-release was still fresh and exciting, and "The Lion King (3D)" felt timely given the movie's imminent Blu-ray release. Audiences have been hit with three 3D re-releases in the year since, meaning the novelty value has definitely worn off."


title: The Lion King

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of with an average score of , based on reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "Emotionally stirring, richly drawn, and beautifully animated, "The Lion King" stands tall within Disney's pantheon of classic family films." It also ranked 56th on their "Top 100 Animation Movies". At Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, the film received a score of 88 out of 100 based on 30 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a rare "A+" grade on an A+ to F scale.


title: The Lion King

text: Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of a possible four and called it "a superbly drawn animated feature". He further wrote in his print review, "The saga of Simba, which in its deeply buried origins owes something to Greek tragedy and certainly to "Hamlet", is a learning experience as well as an entertainment." On the television program "Siskel & Ebert", the film was praised but received a mixed reaction when compared to the previous Disney films. Ebert and his partner Gene Siskel both gave the film a "Thumbs Up", but Siskel said that it was not as good as "Beauty and the Beast" and that it was "a good film, not a great one". Hal Hinson of "The Washington Post" called it "an impressive, almost daunting achievement" and felt that the film was "spectacular in a manner that has nearly become commonplace with Disney's feature-length animations", but was less enthusiastic toward the end of his review saying, "Shakespearean in tone, epic in scope, it seems more appropriate for grown-ups than for kids. If truth be told, even for adults it is downright strange."


title: The Lion King

text: Owen Gleiberman of "Entertainment Weekly" praised the film, writing that it "has the resonance to stand not just as a terrific cartoon but as an emotionally pungent movie".


title: The Lion King

text: "Rolling Stone" film critic Peter Travers praised the film and felt that it was "a hugely entertaining blend of music, fun, and eye-popping thrills, though it doesn't lack for heart". James Berardinelli from Reelviews.net praised the film saying, "With each new animated release, Disney seems to be expanding its already-broad horizons a little more. "The Lion King" is the most mature (in more than one sense) of these films, and there clearly has been a conscious effort to please adults as much as children. Happily, for those of us who generally stay far away from 'cartoons', they have succeeded."


title: The Lion King

text: Some reviewers still had problems with the film's narrative. The staff of "TV Guide" wrote that while "The Lion King" was technically proficient and entertaining, it "offers a less memorable song score than did the previous hits, and a hasty, unsatisfying dramatic resolution." "The New Yorker"s Terrence Rafferty considered that despite the good animation, the story felt like "manipulat[ing] our responses at will", as "Between traumas, the movie serves up soothingly banal musical numbers and silly, rambunctious comedy".


title: The Lion King

text: In 2008, "The Lion King" was ranked as the 319th greatest film ever made by "Empire" magazine, and in June 2011, "TIME" named it one of "The 25 All-TIME Best Animated Films". In June 2008, the American Film Institute listed "The Lion King" as the fourth best film in the animation genre in its AFI's 10 Top 10 list, having previously put "Hakuna Matata" as 99th on its AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs ranking.


title: The Lion King

text: In 2016, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".


title: The Lion King

text: Certain elements of the film were thought to bear a resemblance to Osamu Tezuka's 1960s Japanese anime television series, "Jungle Emperor" (known as "Kimba the White Lion" in the United States), with some similarities between a number of characters and various individual scenes. The 1994 release of "The Lion King" drew a protest in Japan, where "Kimba" and its creator Osamu Tezuka are cultural icons. 488 Japanese cartoonists and animators, led by manga author Machiko Satonaka, signed a petition accusing Disney of plagiarism and demanding that they give due credit to Tezuka. Matthew Broderick believed initially that he was, in fact, working on an American version of "Kimba" since he was familiar with the Japanese original.


title: The Lion King

text: "The Lion King" director Roger Allers claimed complete unfamiliarity with the series until the movie was nearly completed, and did not remember it being ever mentioned during development. Madhavi Sunder has suggested that Allers might have seen the 1989 remake of "Kimba" on prime time television while living in Tokyo. However, while Allers did indeed move to Tokyo in 1983 in order to work on "" (1989), he moved back to the United States in 1985, four years before the 1989 remake of "Kimba" began airing. Co-director Rob Minkoff also stated that he was unfamiliar with it. Minkoff also observed that whenever a story is based in Africa, it is "not unusual to have characters like a baboon, a bird, or hyenas."


title: The Lion King

text: Takayuki Matsutani, the president of Tezuka Productions which created "Kimba the White Lion", said in 1994 that "quite a few staff of our company saw a preview of "The Lion King", discussed this subject and came to the conclusion that you cannot avoid having these similarities as long as you use animals as characters and try to draw images out of them". Yoshihiro Shimizu of Tezuka Productions has refuted rumors that the studio was paid hush money by Disney and stated that they have no interest in suing Disney, explaining that "we think it's a totally different story". Shimizu further explained that they rejected urges from some American lawyers to sue because "we're a small, weak company... Disney's lawyers are among the top twenty in the world!" Tezuka's family and Tezuka Productions never pursued litigation.


title: The Lion King

text: Fred Ladd, who was involved early on with importing "Kimba" and other Japanese anime into America for NBC, expressed incredulity that Disney's people could remain ignorant. Ladd stated there was at least one animator remembered by his colleagues as being an avid "Kimba" fan and being quite vociferous about Disney's conduct during production. Animators Tom Sito and Mark Kausler have both stated that they had watched "Kimba" as children in the 1960s. However, Sito maintains there was "absolutely no inspiration" from "Kimba" during the production of "The Lion King", and Kausler emphasized Disney's own "Bambi" as being their model during development.


title: The Lion King

text: The controversy surrounding "Kimba" and "The Lion King" was parodied in "The Simpsons" episode "Round Springfield", where Mufasa appears through the clouds and says, "You must avenge my death, Kimba... I mean, Simba."


title: The Lion King

text: Protests were raised against one scene where it appears as if the word "SEX" might have been embedded into the dust flying in the sky when Simba flops down, which conservative activist Donald Wildmon asserted was a subliminal message intended to promote sexual promiscuity. Animator Tom Sito has stated that the letters spell "SFX" (a common abbreviation for "special effects"), not with an "E" instead of the "F", and were intended as an innocent "signature" created by the effects animation team.


title: The Lion King

text: Hyena biologists protested against the animal's portrayal, though the complaints may have been somewhat tongue-in-cheek. One hyena researcher, who had organized the animators' visit to the University of California, Berkeley, Field Station for the Study of Behavior, Ecology, and Reproduction, where they would observe and sketch captive hyenas, listed "boycott "The Lion King"" in an article listing ways to help preserve hyenas in the wild, and later "joke[d] that "The Lion King" set back hyena conservation efforts." Even so, the film was also credited with "spark[ing] an interest" in hyenas at the Berkeley center.


title: The Lion King

text: The film has been criticized for race and class issues, with the hyenas seen as reflecting negative stereotypes of black and Latino ethnic communities.


title: The Lion King

text: The first "Lion King"–related animated project was the spin-off television series, "The Lion King's Timon & Pumbaa", which centers on the characters of Timon and Pumbaa, as they have their own (mis)adventures both within' and outside of the Serengeti. the show ran for three seasons and 85 episodes between 1995 and 1999. Ernie Sabella continued to voice Pumbaa, while Timon was voiced by Quinton Flynn and Kevin Schon in addition to Nathan Lane. One of the show's music video segments "Stand By Me", featuring Timon singing the eponymous song, was later edited into an animated short which was released in 1995, accompanying the theatrical release of "Tom and Huck" (1995).


title: The Lion King

text: Disney released two direct-to-video films related to "The Lion King". The first was sequel "", released in 1998 on VHS. The film centers around Simba and Nala's daughter, Kiara, who falls in love with Kovu, a male lion who was raised in a pride of Scar's followers, the Outsiders. "The Lion King 1½", another direct-to-video "Lion King" film, saw its release in 2004. It is a prequel in showing how Timon and Pumbaa met each other, and also a parallel in that it also depicts what the characters were retconned to have done during the events of the original movie.


title: The Lion King

text: In June 2014, it was announced that a new TV series based on the film would be released called "The Lion Guard", featuring Kion, the second-born cub of Simba and Nala. "The Lion Guard" is a sequel to "The Lion King" and takes place during the time-gap within "The Lion King II: Simba's Pride", with the last 2 episodes of Season 3 taking place after the events of that film. It was first broadcast on Disney Channel as a television film titled "The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar" in November 2015 before airing as a series on Disney Junior in January 2016.


title: The Lion King

text: In September 2016, following the critical and financial success of "The Jungle Book", Walt Disney Pictures announced that they were developing a CGI remake of "The Lion King" by the same name, with Jon Favreau directing. The following month, Jeff Nathanson was hired to write the script for the film. Favreau originally planned to shoot it back-to-back with the sequel to "The Jungle Book". However, it was reported in early 2017 that the latter film was put on hold in order for Favreau to instead focus mainly on "The Lion King". In February 2017, Favreau announced that Donald Glover had been cast as Simba and that James Earl Jones would be reprising the role of Mufasa. The following month, it was reported that was Favreau's top choice to voice Nala, but she had not accepted the role yet due to a pregnancy. In April 2017, Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen joined the film as Timon and Pumbaa, respectively. Two months later, John Oliver was cast as Zazu. At the end of July 2017, had reportedly entered final negotiations to play Nala and contribute a new soundtrack. The following month, Chiwetel Ejiofor entered talks to play Scar. Later on, Alfre Woodard and John Kani joined the film as Sarabi and Rafiki, respectively. On November 1, 2017, and Chiwetel Ejiofor were officially confirmed to voice Nala and Scar, with Eric André, Florence Kasumba, Keegan-Michael Key, JD McCrary, and Shahadi Wright Joseph joining the cast as the voices of Azizi, Shenzi, and Kamari, young Simba, and young Nala, respectively, while Hans Zimmer would return to score the film's music. On November 28, 2017, it was reported that Elton John had signed onto the project to rework his musical compositions from the original film.


title: The Lion King

text: In June 2020, Parkwood Entertainment and Disney announced that a film titled "Black Is King" would be released on July 31, 2020, on Disney+. The live-action film is inspired by "The Lion King" (2019) and serves as a visual album for the tie-in album "", which was curated by Beyoncé for the film. Directed, written and executive produced by Beyoncé, "Black Is King" is described as reimagining "the lessons of "The Lion King" for today's young kings and queens in search of their own crowns". The film chronicles the story of a young African king who undergoes a "transcendent journey through betrayal, love and self-identity" to reclaim his throne, utilizing the guidance of his ancestors and childhood love, with the story being told through the voices of present-day Black people. The cast includes Lupita Nyong'o, Naomi Campbell, Jay-Z, Kelly Rowland, Pharrell Williams, Tina Knowles-Lawson, Aweng Ade-Chuol, and Adut Akech.


title: The Lion King

text: On September 29, 2020, "Deadline Hollywood" reported that a follow-up film was in development with Barry Jenkins attached to direct. While "The Hollywood Reporter" said the film would be a prequel about Mufasa during his formative years, "Deadline" said it would be a sequel centering on both Mufasa's origins and the events after the first film, similar to "The Godfather Part II". Jeff Nathanson, the screenwriter for the remake, has reportedly finished a draft. In August 2021, it was reported that Aaron Pierre and Kelvin Harrison Jr. had been cast as Mufasa and Scar respectively. The film will not be a remake of "", the 1998 direct-to-video sequel to the original animated film. In September 2022 at the D23 Expo, it was announced that the film will be titled "Mufasa: The Lion King" and that it will follow the titular character's origin story. Seth Rogen, Billy Eichner, and John Kani will reprise their roles as Pumbaa, Timon, and Rafiki, respectively. The film is scheduled to release on July 5, 2024.


title: The Lion King

text: Along with the film release, three different video games based on "The Lion King" were released by Virgin Interactive in December 1994. The main title was developed by Westwood Studios, and published for PC and Amiga computers and the consoles SNES and Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. Dark Technologies created the Game Boy version, while Syrox Developments handled the Master System and Game Gear version. The film and sequel "Simba's Pride" later inspired another game, Torus Games' "" (2000) for the Game Boy Color and PlayStation. Timon and Pumbaa also appeared in "Timon & Pumbaa's Jungle Games", a 1995 PC game collection of puzzle games by 7th Level, later ported to the SNES by Tiertex.


title: The Lion King

text: The Square Enix series "Kingdom Hearts" features Simba as a recurring summon, as well as a playable in the "Lion King" world, known as Pride Lands, in "Kingdom Hearts II". There the plotline is loosely related to the later part of the original film, with all of the main characters except Zazu and Sarabi. "The Lion King" also provides one of the worlds featured in the 2011 action-adventure game "Disney Universe", and Simba was featured in the Nintendo DS title "Disney Friends" (2008). The video game "Disney Magic Kingdoms" includes some characters of the film and some attractions based on locations of the film as content to unlock for a limited time.


title: The Lion King

text: Walt Disney Theatrical produced a musical stage adaptation of the same name, which premiered in Minneapolis, Minnesota in July 1997, and later opened on Broadway in October 1997 at the New Amsterdam Theatre. "The Lion King" musical was directed by Julie Taymor and featured songs from both the movie and "Rhythm of the Pride Lands", along with three new compositions by Elton John and Tim Rice. Mark Mancina did the musical arrangements and new orchestral tracks. To celebrate the African culture background the story is based on, there are six indigenous African languages sung and spoken throughout the show: Swahili, Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Tswana, Congolese. The musical became one of the most successful in Broadway history, winning six Tony Awards including Best Musical, and despite moving to the Minskoff Theatre in 2006, is still running to this day in New York, becoming the third longest-running show and highest grossing Broadway production in history. The show's financial success led to adaptations all over the world.


title: The Lion King

text: "The Lion King" inspired two attractions retelling the story of the film at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. The first, "The Legend of the Lion King", featured a recreation of the film through life-size puppets of its characters, and ran from 1994 to 2002 at Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World. Another that is still running is the live-action 30-minute musical revue of the movie, "Festival of the Lion King", which incorporates the musical numbers into gymnastic routines with live actors, along with animatronic puppets of Simba and Pumbaa and a costumed actor as Timon. The attraction opened in April 1998 at Disney World's Animal Kingdom, and in September 2005 in Hong Kong Disneyland's Adventureland. A similar version under the name "The Legend of the Lion King" was featured in Disneyland Paris from 2004 to 2009.


title: Virginia

text: Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are shaped by the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Chesapeake Bay, which provide habitat for much of its flora and fauna. The capital of the Commonwealth is Richmond; Virginia Beach is the most-populous city, and Fairfax County is the most-populous political subdivision. The Commonwealth's population was over 8.65million, with 36% of them living in the Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area.


title: Virginia

text: The area's history begins with several indigenous groups, including the Powhatan. In 1607, the London Company established the Colony of Virginia as the first permanent English colony in the New World. Virginia's state nickname, the Old Dominion, is a reference to this status. Slave labor and land acquired from displaced native tribes fueled the growing plantation economy, but also fueled conflicts both inside and outside the colony. Virginia was one of the original Thirteen Colonies in the American Revolution, and battles in Virginia secured the independence of the United States. During the American Civil War, Virginia was split when the state government in Richmond joined the Confederacy, but many of the state's northwestern counties remained loyal to the Union, becoming the state of West Virginia in 1863. Although the Commonwealth was under one-party rule for nearly a century following the Reconstruction era, both major political parties are competitive in modern Virginia.


title: Virginia

text: Virginia's state legislature is the Virginia General Assembly, which was established in July 1619, making it the oldest current law-making body in North America. It is made up of a 40-member Senate and a 100-member House of Delegates. The state government is unique in how it treats cities and counties equally, manages local roads, and prohibits governors from serving consecutive terms. Virginia's economy has many sectors: agriculture in the Shenandoah Valley; high tech and federal agencies, including the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency, in Northern Virginia; and military facilities in Hampton Roads, the site of the region's main seaport.


title: Virginia

text: May 2007 marked 400 years since the establishment of the Jamestown Colony. Observances for this quadricentennial highlighted contributions from Native Americans, Africans, and Europeans, each of which had a significant part in shaping Virginia's history. Warfare, including among these groups, has also had an important role. Virginia was a focal point in conflicts from the French and Indian War, the American Revolution and the Civil War, to the Cold War and the War on Terrorism. Fictionalized stories about the early colony, in particular the story of Pocahontas and John Smith, first became popular in the period after the Revolutionary War, and together with other myths surrounding George Washington's childhood and the plantation elite in the antebellum period, became touchstones of Virginian and American culture and helped shape the state's historic politics and beliefs.


title: Virginia

text: The first people are estimated to have arrived in Virginia over 12,000 years ago. By 5,000 years ago, more permanent settlements emerged, and farming began by 900 AD. By 1500, the Algonquian peoples had founded towns such as Werowocomoco in the Tidewater region, which they referred to as Tsenacommacah. The other major language groups in the area were the Siouan to the west and the Iroquoians, who included the Nottoway and Meherrin, to the north and south. After 1570, the Algonquians consolidated under Wahunsenacawh, known in English as Chief Powhatan, in response to threats from these other groups on their trade network. Powhatan controlled more than thirty smaller tribes, which shared a common Virginia Algonquian language, with more than 150 settlements that had total population of around 15,000 in 1607. Over that century however, three-fourths of the native population in Virginia would die from smallpox and other Old World diseases.


title: Virginia

text: Several European expeditions, including a group of Spanish Jesuits, explored the Chesapeake Bay during the 16th century. To help counter Spain's colonies in the Caribbean, Queen Elizabeth I of England supported Walter Raleigh's April 1584 expedition to the Atlantic coast of North America. The name "Virginia" was used by Captain Arthur Barlowe in the expedition's report, and may have been suggested that year by Raleigh or Elizabeth, perhaps noting her status as the "Virgin Queen" or that they viewed the land as being untouched, and may also be related to an Algonquin phrase, "Wingandacoa" or "Windgancon", or leader's name, Wingina, as heard by the expedition. Initially the name applied to the entire coastal region from South Carolina to Maine, plus the island of Bermuda. Raleigh's colony failed, but in 1606, the new king James I of England issued the First Virginia Charter to the London Company, a joint stock company that financed a new expedition, which was led by Christopher Newport and sailed that December. They landed in Virginia in May 1607, and established a settlement named for the king, Jamestown.


title: Virginia

text: Life in the colony was perilous, and many died during the Starving Time in 1609 and in a series of conflicts with the Powhatan Confederacy that started in 1610, and flared up again in 1622, when led by Powhatan's brother, Opechancanough. Only 3,400 of the 6,000 early settlers had survived by 1624. However, European demand for tobacco fueled the arrival of more settlers and servants. The headright system tried to solve the labor shortage by providing colonists with land for each indentured servant they transported to Virginia. Colonists struggled with rule from both the London Company and English monarchy, which took direct control of the colony in 1624 in part because in 1619, colonists had gained greater local control with an elected leadership. Later called the House of Burgesses, it shared power with the governors appointed by the crown. In 1635, colonists arrested a despised governor and forced him to return to England against his will. The turmoil of the English Civil War permitted Virginia even greater autonomy during the 1650s, and many supporters of the king fled to the colony, becoming known as "Virginia Cavaliers."


title: Virginia

text: African workers were first imported to Jamestown in 1619 initially under the rules of indentured servitude. The shift to a system of African slavery in Virginia was propelled by the legal cases of John Punch, who was sentenced to lifetime slavery for attempting to escape servitude in 1640, and of John Casor, who was claimed by Anthony Johnson as his servant for life in 1655. Slavery first appears in Virginia statutes in 1661 and 1662, when a law made it hereditary based on the mother's status. Tensions and the geographic differences between the working and ruling classes led to Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, by which time current and former indentured servants made up as much as eighty percent of the population. The rebels, who burned Jamestown, were largely from the colony's frontier, and opposed to the governor's conciliatory policy towards native tribes. One result of the rebellion was the signing at Middle Plantation of the Treaty of 1677, which made the signatory tribes tributary states and was part of a pattern of appropriating tribal land by force and treaty.


title: Virginia

text: In 1693, the College of William & Mary was founded in Middle Plantation, which was renamed Williamsburg in 1699, when it became the new capital of the growing colony. Colonists in the 1700s were likewise moving inland, and in 1747, a group of Virginian speculators formed the Ohio Company, with the backing of the British crown, to start English settlement and trade in the Ohio Country west of the Appalachian Mountains. The Kingdom of France, which claimed this area as part of their colony of New France, viewed this as a threat, and the ensuing French and Indian War became part of the Seven Years' War (1756–1763). A militia from several British colonies, called the Virginia Regiment, was led by then-Lieutenant Colonel George Washington.


title: Virginia

text: The British Parliament's efforts to levy new taxes in the decade following the French and Indian War were deeply unpopular in the colonies. In the House of Burgesses, opposition to taxation without representation was led by Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee, among others. Virginians began to coordinate their actions with other colonies in 1773, and sent delegates to the Continental Congress the following year. After the House of Burgesses was dissolved by the British governor in 1774, Virginia's revolutionary leaders continued to govern via the Virginia Conventions. On May 15, 1776, the Convention declared Virginia's independence from the British Empire and adopted George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights, which was then included in a new constitution. Another Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, drew upon Mason's work in drafting the national Declaration of Independence.


title: Virginia

text: When the American Revolutionary War began in 1776, George Washington was selected to head the Continental Army, and many Virginians joined the army and other revolutionary militias. Virginia was the first colony to ratify the Articles of Confederation in December 1777. In April 1780, the capital was moved to Richmond at the urging of Governor Thomas Jefferson, who feared that Williamsburg's coastal location would make it vulnerable to British attack. British forces indeed landed around Portsmouth in October 1780, and soldiers under Benedict Arnold managed to raid Richmond in January 1781. The British army had over seven thousand soldiers in Virginia that year, but General Charles Cornwallis and his superiors were indecisive, and maneuvers by the three thousand soldiers under the Marquis de Lafayette and twenty-nine French warships together managed to trap the British on the Virginia Peninsula in September 1781. Around sixteen thousand soldiers under George Washington and Comte de Rochambeau quickly converged there and defeated Cornwallis in the siege of Yorktown. His surrender on October 19, 1781, led to peace negotiations in Paris and secured the independence of the colonies.


title: Virginia

text: Virginians were instrumental in the new country's early years and in writing the United States Constitution. James Madison drafted the Virginia Plan in 1787 and the Bill of Rights in 1789. Virginia ratified the Constitution on June 25, 1788. The three-fifths compromise ensured that Virginia, with its large number of slaves, initially had the largest bloc in the House of Representatives. Together with the Virginia dynasty of presidents, this gave the Commonwealth national importance. In 1790, both Virginia and Maryland ceded territory to form the new District of Columbia, though the Virginian area was retroceded in 1846. Virginia is called the "Mother of States" because of its role in being carved into states such as Kentucky, which became the fifteenth state in 1792, and for the numbers of American pioneers born in Virginia.


title: Virginia

text: Between 1790 and 1860, the number of slaves in Virginia rose from around 290 thousand to over 490 thousand, roughly one-third of the state population during that time, and the number of slaveholders rose to over fifty thousand, both the most in the U.S. Soil exhausted by years of monoculture tobacco farming pushed the plantation economy to expand westward, and as labor-intensive cotton came to dominate southern agriculture after 1800, Virginia plantations turned to exporting slaves by the thousands, breaking up many families in the process. In addition to agriculture, slave labor was increasingly used in mining, shipbuilding and other industries. The failed slave uprisings of Gabriel Prosser in 1800, George Boxley in 1815, and Nat Turner in 1831, however, marked the growing resistance to the system of slavery. One response to Nat Turner's rebellion by the Virginia government was to arrange for ships to transport free Blacks to Liberia.


title: Virginia

text: On October 16, 1859, abolitionist John Brown led a raid on an armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in an attempt to start a slave revolt across the southern states. The polarized national response to his raid and execution in Charles Town that December marked a tipping point for many who believed the end of slavery would need to be achieved by force. Abraham Lincoln's 1860 election further convinced many southern supporters of slavery that his opposition to its expansion would ultimately mean the end of slavery across the country. In South Carolina, the first state to secede to preserve the institution of slavery, a regiment loyal to the newly-formed Confederate States of America seized Fort Sumter on April 14, 1861, prompting President Lincoln to call for a federal army of 75,000 men from state militias the next day.


title: Virginia

text: In Virginia, a special convention called by the General Assembly voted on April 17 to secede on the condition it was approved in a referendum the next month. The convention then voted to join the Confederacy, which named Richmond its capital on May 20. During the May 23 referendum, armed pro-Confederate groups prevented the casting and counting of votes from many northwestern counties that opposed secession. Representatives from 27 of these counties instead began the Wheeling Convention that month, which organized a government loyal to the Union and led to the separation of West Virginia as a new state.


title: Virginia

text: The armies of the Union and Confederacy first met on July 21, 1861 in Battle of Bull Run near Manassas, Virginia, where a Confederate victory established that the war would not be easily decided. Union General George B. McClellan organized the Army of the Potomac, which landed on the Virginia Peninsula in March 1862 and reached the outskirts of Richmond that June. With Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston wounded in fighting outside the city, command his Army of Northern Virginia fell to Robert E. Lee. Over the next month, Lee drove the Union army back, and starting that September, led the first of several invasions into Union territory. During the next three years of war, more battles were fought in Virginia than anywhere else, including the battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania, and the concluding Battle of Appomattox Court House, where Lee surrendered on April 9, 1865. After the capture of Richmond that month, the state capital was briefly moved to Lynchburg, while the Confederate leadership fled to Danville. 32,751 Virginians died in the Civil War.


title: Virginia

text: Virginia was formally restored to the United States in 1870, due to the work of the Committee of Nine. During the post-war Reconstruction era, African Americans were able to unite in communities, particularly around Richmond, Danville, and the Tidewater region, and take a greater role in Virginia society, as many achieved some land ownership during the 1870s. Virginia adopted a constitution in 1868 which guaranteed political, civil, and voting rights, and provided for free public schools. However, with much of the railroads and other infrastructure investments destroyed during the Civil War, the Commonwealth was deeply in debt, and in the late 1870s redirected money from public schools to pay bondholders. The Readjuster Party formed in 1877 and won legislative power in 1879 by uniting Black and white Virginians behind a shared opposition to debt payments and the perceived plantation elites.


title: Virginia

text: The Readjusters focused on building up schools, like Virginia Tech and Virginia State, and successfully forced West Virginia to share in the pre-war debt. But in 1883, they were divided by a proposed repeal of anti-miscegenation laws, and days before that year's election, a riot in Danville involving armed policemen left four Black men and one white man dead. These events motivated a push by white supremacists to seize political power, and segregationists in the Democratic Party won the legislature that year and maintained control for decades. They passed Jim Crow laws and in 1902 rewrote the state constitution to include a poll tax and other voter registration measures that effectively disenfranchised most African Americans and many poor whites.


title: Virginia

text: New economic forces would meanwhile industrialize the Commonwealth. Virginian James Albert Bonsack invented the tobacco cigarette rolling machine in 1880 leading to new large-scale production centered around Richmond. Railroad magnate Collis Potter Huntington founded Newport News Shipbuilding in 1886, which was responsible for building six World War I-era dreadnoughts, seven battleships, and 25 destroyers for the U.S. Navy from 1907 to 1923. During the war, German submarines like U-151 attacked ships outside the port, which was a major site for transportation of both soldiers and supplies. A homecoming parade to honor African-American veterans returning from the war was attacked in July 1919 as part of a renewed white-supremacy movement that was known as Red Summer. During World War II, the shipyard quadrupled its labor force to 70,000 by 1943, while the Radford Arsenal outside Blacksburg had 22,000 workers making explosives.


title: Virginia

text: Protests against segregated schools started by Barbara Rose Johns in 1951 in Farmville led to the lawsuit "Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County". This case, filed by Richmond natives Spottswood Robinson and Oliver Hill, was decided in 1954 with "Brown v. Board of Education", which rejected the doctrine of "separate but equal". But, in 1956, under the policy of "massive resistance" led by the influential segregationist Senator Harry F. Byrd and his Byrd Organization, the Commonwealth prohibited desegregated local schools from receiving state or private funding as part of the Stanley Plan. After schools in many districts began closing in September 1958, state and district courts ruled the plan unconstitutional, and on February 2, 1959, the first Black students integrated schools in Arlington and Norfolk, where they were known as the Norfolk 17. Prince Edward County still refused to integrate, and closed their county school system in June 1959. The Supreme Court ordered the county's public schools to be, like others in the state, open and integrated in May 1964, which they finally did that September.


title: Virginia

text: The civil rights movement gained national support during the 1960s. Federal passage of the Civil Rights Act in June 1964 and Voting Rights Act in August 1965, and their later enforcement, helped end racial segregation in Virginia and overturn Jim Crow era state laws. In June 1967, the Supreme Court also struck down the state's ban on interracial marriage with "Loving v. Virginia". In 1968, Governor Mills Godwin called a commission to rewrite the state constitution. The new constitution, which banned discrimination and removed articles which now violated federal law, passed in a referendum with 71.8% support and went into effect in June 1971. In 1977, Black members became the majority of Richmond's city council; in 1989, Douglas Wilder became the first African American elected as governor in the United States; and in 1992, Bobby Scott became the first Black congressman from Virginia since 1888.


title: Virginia

text: The expansion of federal government offices into Northern Virginia's suburbs during the Cold War boosted the region's population and economy. The Central Intelligence Agency outgrew their offices in Foggy Bottom during the Korean War, and moved to Langley in 1961, in part due to a decision by the National Security Council that the agency relocate outside the District of Columbia. The agency was involved in various Cold War events, and its headquarters was a target of Soviet espionage activities. The Pentagon, built in Arlington during World War II as the headquarters of the Department of Defense, was one of the targets of the September 11, 2001 attacks; 189 people died at the site when a jet passenger plane was flown into the building. Mass shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007 and in Virginia Beach in 2019 led to passage of gun control measures in 2020. Racial injustice and the presence of Confederate monuments in Virginia have also led to large demonstrations, including in August 2017, when a white supremacist drove his car into protesters, killing one, and in June 2020, when protests that were part of the larger Black Lives Matter movement brought about the removal of statues on Monument Avenue in Richmond and elsewhere.


title: Virginia

text: Virginia is located in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States. Virginia has a total area of , including of water, making it the 35th-largest state by area. The Commonwealth is bordered by Maryland and Washington, D.C. to the north and east; by the Atlantic Ocean to the east; by North Carolina to the south; by Tennessee to the southwest; by Kentucky to the west; and by West Virginia to the north and west. Virginia's boundary with Maryland and Washington, D.C. extends to the low-water mark of the south shore of the Potomac River.


title: Virginia

text: The Commonwealth's southern border is defined as 36°30' north latitude, though surveyor error in the 1700s led to deviations of as much as three arcminutes as the North Carolina border moved west. Surveyors appointed by Virginia and Tennessee worked in 1802 and 1803 to reset the border as a line from the summit of White Top Mountain to the top of Tri-State Peak in the Cumberland Mountains. However, errors in this line were discovered in 1856, and the Virginia General Assembly proposed a new surveying commission in 1871. Tennessee's representatives preferred to keep the 1803 line, and in 1893, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in their favor in the case "Virginia v. Tennessee". One result of this is the division of the city of Bristol between the two states.


title: Virginia

text: The Chesapeake Bay separates the contiguous portion of the Commonwealth from the two-county peninsula of Virginia's Eastern Shore. The bay was formed from the drowned river valley of the ancient Susquehanna River. Many of Virginia's rivers flow into the Chesapeake Bay, including the Potomac, Rappahannock, York, and James, which create three peninsulas in the bay, traditionally referred to as "necks" named Northern Neck, Middle Peninsula, and the Virginia Peninsula from north to south. Sea level rise has eroded the land on Virginia's islands, which include Tangier Island in the bay and Chincoteague, one of 23 barrier islands on the Atlantic coast.


title: Virginia

text: The Tidewater is a coastal plain between the Atlantic coast and the fall line. It includes the Eastern Shore and major estuaries of Chesapeake Bay. The Piedmont is a series of sedimentary and igneous rock-based foothills east of the mountains which were formed in the Mesozoic era. The region, known for its heavy clay soil, includes the Southwest Mountains around Charlottesville. The Blue Ridge Mountains are a physiographic province of the Appalachian Mountains with the highest points in the Commonwealth, the tallest being Mount Rogers at . The Ridge-and-Valley region is west of the mountains, carbonate rock based, and includes the Massanutten Mountain ridge and the Great Appalachian Valley, which is called the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. The Cumberland Plateau and Cumberland Mountains are in the southwest corner of Virginia, south of the Allegheny Plateau. In this region, rivers flow northwest, with a dendritic drainage system, into the Ohio River basin.


title: Virginia

text: The Virginia Seismic Zone has not had a history of regular earthquake activity. Earthquakes are rarely above 4.5 in magnitude, because Virginia is located away from the edges of the North American Plate. The Commonwealth's largest earthquake in at least a century, at a magnitude of 5.8, struck central Virginia on August 23, 2011, near Mineral. Due to the area's geologic properties, this earthquake was felt from Northern Florida to Southern Ontario. 35million years ago, a bolide impacted what is now eastern Virginia. The resulting Chesapeake Bay impact crater may explain what earthquakes and subsidence the region does experience. A meteor impact is also theorized as the source of Lake Drummond, the largest of the two natural lakes in the state.


title: Virginia

text: The Commonwealth's carbonate rock is filled with more than 4,000 limestone caves, ten of which are open for tourism, including the popular Luray Caverns and Skyline Caverns. Virginia's iconic Natural Bridge is also the remaining roof of a collapsed limestone cave. Coal mining takes place in the three mountainous regions at 45 distinct coal beds near Mesozoic basins. More than 72million tons of other non-fuel resources, such as slate, kyanite, sand, or gravel, were also mined in Virginia . The largest-known deposits of uranium in the U.S. are under Coles Hill, Virginia. Despite a challenge that reached the U.S. Supreme Court twice, the state has banned its mining since 1982 due to environmental and public health concerns.


title: Virginia

text: Virginia has a humid subtropical climate that transitions to humid continental west of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Seasonal extremes vary from average lows of in January to average highs of in July. The Atlantic Ocean and Gulf Stream have a strong effect on eastern and southeastern coastal areas of the Commonwealth, making the climate there warmer and more constant. Most of Virginia's recorded extremes in temperature and precipitation have occurred in the Blue Ridge Mountains and areas west. Virginia receives an average of of precipitation annually, with the Shenandoah Valley being the state's driest region due to the mountains on either side.


title: Virginia

text: Virginia has around 35–45 days with thunderstorms annually, and storms are common in the late afternoon and evenings between April and September. These months are also the most common for tornadoes, fifteen of which touched down in the Commonwealth in 2020. Hurricanes and tropical storms can occur from August to October, and though they typically impact coastal regions, the deadliest natural disaster in Virginia was Hurricane Camille, which killed over 150 people mainly in inland Nelson County in 1969. Between December and March, cold-air damming caused by the Appalachian Mountains can lead to significant snowfalls across the state, such as the January 2016 blizzard, which created the state's highest recorded snowfall of near Bluemont. Virginia only received of snow during winter 2018–19, just above the state's average of .


title: Virginia

text: Climate change in Virginia is leading to higher temperatures year-round as well as more heavy rain and flooding events. Urban heat islands can be found in many Virginia cities and suburbs, particularly in neighborhoods linked to historic redlining. Arlington had the most code orange days in 2021 for high ozone pollution in the air, with four, followed by Fairfax County with three. Exposure of particulate matter in Virginia's air has been cut in half from 13.5 micrograms per cubic meter in 2003 to 6.5 in 2021. The closure and conversion of coal power plants in Virginia and the Ohio Valley region has reduced haze in the mountains, which peaked in 1998. Coal has declined as a source of Virginia's electricity from 44% in 2008 to just 4% in 2019, and current plans call for 30% of the Commonwealth's electricity to be renewable by 2030 and for all to be carbon-free by 2050.


title: Virginia

text: Forests cover 62% of Virginia , of which 78% is considered hardwood forest, meaning that trees in Virginia are primarily deciduous and broad-leaved. The other 22% is pine, with Loblolly and shortleaf pine dominating much of central and eastern Virginia. In the western and mountainous parts of the Commonwealth, oak and hickory are most common, while lower altitudes are more likely to have small but dense stands of moisture-loving hemlocks and mosses in abundance. Spongy moth infestations in oak trees and the blight in chestnut trees have decreased both of their numbers, leaving more room for hickory and invasive ailanthus trees. In the lowland tidewater and Piedmont, yellow pines tend to dominate, with bald cypress wetland forests in the Great Dismal and Nottoway swamps. Other common trees include red spruce, Atlantic White cedar, tulip-poplar, and the flowering dogwood, the state tree and flower, as well as willows, ashes, and laurels. Plants like milkweed, dandelions, daisies, ferns, and Virginia creeper, which is featured on the state flag, are also common. The Thompson Wildlife Area in Fauquier is known for one of the largest populations of trillium wildflowers in all of North America.


title: Virginia

text: , roughly 16.2% of land in the Commonwealth is protected by federal, state, and local governments and non-profits. Federal lands account for the majority, with thirty National Park Service units in the state, such as Great Falls Park and the Appalachian Trail, and one national park, Shenandoah. Shenandoah was established in 1935 and encompasses the scenic Skyline Drive. Almost forty percent of the park's total area has been designated as wilderness under the National Wilderness Preservation System. The U.S. Forest Service administers the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests, which cover more than within Virginia's mountains, and continue into West Virginia and Kentucky. The Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge also extends into North Carolina, as does the Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge, which marks the beginning of the Outer Banks.


title: Virginia

text: State agencies control about one-third of protected land in the state, and the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation manages over in forty Virginia state parks and in 65 Natural Area Preserves, plus three undeveloped parks. Breaks Interstate Park crosses the Kentucky border and is one of only two inter-state parks in the United States. Sustainable logging is allowed in 26 state forests managed by the Virginia Department of Forestry totaling , as is hunting in 44 Wildlife Management Areas run by the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources covering over . The Chesapeake Bay is not a national park, but is protected by both state and federal legislation and the inter-state Chesapeake Bay Program, which conducts restoration on the bay and its watershed.


title: Virginia

text: White-tailed deer, one of 75 mammal species found in Virginia, rebounded from an estimated population of as few as 25 thousand in the 1930s to over one million by the 2010s. Native carnivorans include black bears, who have a population of around five to six thousand in the state, as well as bobcats, coyotes, both gray and red foxes, raccoons, weasels and skunks. Rodents include groundhogs, nutria, beavers, both gray squirrels and fox squirrels, chipmunks, and Allegheny woodrats, while the seventeen bat species include brown bats and the Virginia big-eared bat, the state mammal. The Virginia opossum is also the only marsupial native to the United States and Canada, and the native Appalachian cottontail was recognized in 1992 as a distinct species of rabbit, one of three found in the state. Whales, dolphins, and porpoises have also been recorded in Virginia's coastal waters, with bottlenose dolphins being the most frequent aquatic mammals.


title: Virginia

text: Virginia's bird fauna consists of 422 counted species, of which 359 are regularly occurring, 41 are accidental (vagrant), 20 are hypothetical, and two are extinct; of the regularly occurring species, 214 have bred in Virginia, while the rest are winter residents or transients in Virginia. Water birds include sandpipers, wood ducks, and Virginia rail, while common inland examples include warblers, woodpeckers, and cardinals, the state bird. Birds of prey include osprey, broad-winged hawks, and barred owls. There are no species of bird endemic to the Commonwealth. Audubon recognizes 21 Important Bird Areas in the state. Peregrine falcons, whose numbers dramatically declined due to DDT pesticide poisoning in the middle of the 20th century, are the focus of conservation efforts in the state and a reintroduction program in Shenandoah National Park.


title: Virginia

text: Virginia has 226 species of freshwater fish from 25 families; the state's diverse array of fish species is attributable to its varied and humid climate, topography, interconnected river system, and lack of Pleistocene glaciers. The state's lakes and rivers are home to Eastern blacknose dace and sculpin on the Appalachian Plateau; smallmouth bass and redhorse sucker in the Ridge-and-Valley region; brook trout, the state fish, and Kanawha darter in the Blue Ridge; stripeback darter and Roanoke bass in the Piedmont; and swampfish, bluespotted sunfish, and pirate perch in the Tidewater. The Chesapeake Bay is host to clams, oysters, and 350 species of saltwater and estuarine fish, including the bay's most abundant finfish, the Bay anchovy, as well as the invasive blue catfish. An estimated 405 million Chesapeake blue crabs live in the bay . There are 34 native species of crayfish, like the Big Sandy, which often inhabit rocky bottomed streambeds. Amphibians found in Virginia include the Cumberland Plateau salamander and Eastern hellbender, while the northern watersnake is the most common of the 32 snake species.


title: Virginia

text: Virginia is divided into 95counties and 38independent cities, the latter acting in many ways as county-equivalents. This general method of treating cities and counties on par with each other is unique to Virginia; only three other independent cities exist elsewhere in the United States, each in a different state. The differences between counties and cities in Virginia are small and have to do with how each assess new taxes, whether a referendum is necessary to issue bonds, and with the application of Dillon's Rule, which limits the authority of cities and counties to countermand acts expressly allowed by the General Assembly. Within counties, there can also be incorporated towns, which do operate their own governments, and unincorporated communities, which do not. There are no further administrative subdivisions, such as villages or townships.


title: Virginia

text: Over 3million people, 35% of Virginians, live in Northern Virginia, which is part of the larger Washington metropolitan area and the Northeast megalopolis. Fairfax County is the most populous locality in the state, with more than 1.1million residents, although that does not include its county seat Fairfax City, which is one of the independent cities. Fairfax County has a major urban business and shopping center in Tysons Corner, Virginia's largest office market. Neighboring Prince William County is Virginia's second most populous county, with a population exceeding 450,000, and is home to Marine Corps Base Quantico, the FBI Academy and Manassas National Battlefield Park. Loudoun County, with its county seat at Leesburg, is the fastest-growing county in the state. Arlington County is the smallest self-governing county in the U.S. by land area, and has considered reorganizing as an independent city due to its high density.


title: Virginia

text: Richmond is the capital of Virginia, and its city proper has a population of over 230,000, while its metropolitan area has over 1.2million. , Virginia Beach is the most populous independent city in the Commonwealth, with Chesapeake and Norfolk second and third, respectively. The three are part of the larger Hampton Roads metropolitan area, which has a population over 1.7million people and is the site of the world's largest naval base, Naval Station Norfolk. Suffolk, which includes a portion of the Great Dismal Swamp, is the largest city by area at . In western Virginia, Roanoke city and Montgomery County, part of the Blacksburg–Christiansburg metropolitan area, both have surpassed a population of over 100,000 since 2018.


title: Virginia

text: The United States Census Bureau found the state resident population was 8,631,393 on April 1, 2020, a 7.9% increase since the 2010 United States census. Another 23,149 Virginians live overseas, giving the state a total population of 8,654,542. Virginia has the fourth largest overseas population of U.S. states due to its federal employees and military personnel. The birth rate in Virginia was 11.4 per 1,000 over five years, and the median age was 38.4 years old, both identical to the national averages . , the center of population was located in Louisa County, near Richmond.


title: Virginia

text: Immigration between 2010 and 2018 from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 159,627 people, and migration within the country produced a net increase of 155,205 people. Aside from Virginia, the top birth state for Virginians is New York, having overtaken North Carolina in the 1990s, with the Northeast accounting for the largest number of domestic migrants into the state by region. About twelve percent of residents were born outside the United States . El Salvador was the most common foreign country of birth, with India, South Korea, Vietnam, Ethiopia, and the Philippines as other common birthplaces.


title: Virginia

text: The state's most populous racial group, non-Hispanic whites, has declined as a proportion of the population from 76% in 1990 to 58.6% in 2020, as other ethnicities have increased. Immigrants from the islands of Britain and Ireland settled throughout the Commonwealth during the colonial period, a time when roughly three-fourths of immigrants came as indentured servants. Those who identify on the census as having "American ethnicity" are predominantly of English descent, but have ancestors who have been in North America for so long they choose to identify simply as American. The western mountains have many settlements that were founded by Scotch-Irish immigrants before the American Revolution. There are also sizable numbers of people of German descent in the northwestern mountains and Shenandoah Valley, and 10.6% of Virginians are estimated to have German ancestry, .


title: Virginia

text: The largest minority group in Virginia are Blacks and African Americans, who include about one-fifth of the population. Virginia was a major destination of the Atlantic slave trade, and the first generations of enslaved men, women, and children were brought primarily from Angola and the Bight of Biafra. The Igbo ethnic group of what is now southern Nigeria were the single largest African group among slaves in Virginia. Blacks in Virginia also have more European ancestry than those in other southern states, and DNA analysis shows many have asymmetrical male and female ancestry contributions from before the Civil War, evidence of European fathers and African or Native American mothers during the time of slavery. Though the Black population was reduced by the Great Migration to northern industrial cities in the first half of the 20th century, since 1965 there has been a reverse migration of Blacks returning south. The Commonwealth has the highest number of Black-white interracial marriages in the United States, and 8.2% of Virginians describe themselves as multiracial.


title: Virginia

text: More recent immigration in the late 20th century and early 21st century has resulted in new communities of Hispanics and Asians. , 10.5% of Virginia's total population describe themselves as Hispanic or Latino, and 8.8% as Asian. The state's Hispanic population rose by 92% from 2000 to 2010, with two-thirds of Hispanics in the state living in Northern Virginia. Northern Virginia also has a significant population of Vietnamese Americans, whose major wave of immigration followed the Vietnam War. Korean Americans have migrated more recently, attracted by the quality school system. The Filipino American community has about 45,000 in the Hampton Roads area, many of whom have ties to the U.S. Navy and armed forces.


title: Virginia

text: Tribal membership in Virginia is complicated by the legacy of the state's "pencil genocide" of intentionally categorizing Native Americans and Blacks together, and many tribal members do have African and European ancestry. In 2020, the U.S. Census Bureau found that only 0.5% of Virginians were exclusively American Indian or Alaska Native, though 2.1% were in some combination with other ethnicities. The state government has extended recognition to eleven indigenous tribes resident in Virginia. Seven tribes also have federal recognition, including six that were recognized in 2018 after passage of bill named for activist Thomasina Jordan. The Pamunkey and Mattaponi have reservations on tributaries of the York River in the Tidewater region.


title: Virginia

text: According to U.S. Census data on Virginia residents age five and older, 83.2% (6,683,027) speak English at home as a first language, while 16.8% (1,352,586) speak something other than English. Spanish is the next most commonly spoken language, with 7.6% (616,226) of Virginia households, though age is a factor, and 10.3% (139,312) of Virginians under age eighteen speak Spanish. 58.2% of Spanish speakers reported speaking English "very well," but again, of Spanish-speakers under age eighteen, 80.3% speak English "very well." Chinese languages, including Standard Mandarin and Cantonese, were the third most commonly spoken languages with around 0.8% of residents, followed by Vietnamese and Arabic, both with just over 0.7%, and then Korean and Tagalog, with 0.6% and 0.5% respectively.


title: Virginia

text: English was passed as the Commonwealth's official language by statutes in 1981 and again in 1996, though the status is not mandated by the Constitution of Virginia. While a more homogenized American English is found in urban areas, various accents are also used. The Piedmont region is known for its non-rhotic dialect's strong influence on Southern American English, and a BBC America study in 2014 ranked it as one of the most identifiable accents in American English. The Tidewater accent, sometimes described as a subset of the Old Virginia accent, evolved from the language that upper-class English typically spoke in the early Colonial period, while the Appalachian accent has much more influence from the English spoken by Scottish and Irish immigrants from that time. The English spoken on Tangier Island in the Chesapeake Bay, preserved by the island's isolation, contains many phrases and euphemisms not found anywhere else and is said to closely resemble Elizabethan English or "Restoration English."


title: Virginia

text: Virginia is predominantly Christian and Protestant; Baptist denominations combined to form largest group with over a quarter of the population . Baptist denominational groups in Virginia include the Baptist General Association of Virginia, with about 1,400 member churches, which supports both the Southern Baptist Convention and the moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship; and the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia with more than 500 affiliated churches, which supports the Southern Baptist Convention. Roman Catholics are the next largest religious group with around twelve percent. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Arlington includes most of Northern Virginia's Catholic churches, while the Diocese of Richmond covers the rest.


title: Virginia

text: The United Methodist Church, representing about six percent of Virginians, has the Virginia Conference as their regional body in most of the Commonwealth, while the Holston Conference represents much of extreme Southwest Virginia. Around five percent of Virginians attend Pentecostal churches, while around three percent attend Presbyterian churches, which are split between the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Presbyterian Church in America. The Lutheran Church, under the Virginia Synod, Congregational churches, and Episcopalian adherents each comprised less than two percent of the population . The Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, Southern Virginia, and Southwestern Virginia support the various Episcopal churches.


title: Virginia

text: In November 2006, fifteen conservative Episcopal churches voted to split from the Diocese of Virginia over the ordination of openly gay bishops and clergy in other dioceses of the Episcopal Church; these churches continue to claim affiliation with the larger Anglican Communion through other bodies outside the United States. Though Virginia law allows parishioners to determine their church's affiliation, the diocese claimed the secessionist churches' buildings and properties. The resulting property law case, ultimately decided in favor of the mainline diocese, was a test for Episcopal churches nationwide.


title: Virginia

text: Among other religions, adherents of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints constitute just over one percent of the population, with 216 congregations in Virginia . Fairfax Station is the site of the Ekoji Buddhist Temple, of the Jodo Shinshu school, and the Hindu Durga Temple. Sterling is the home of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, which, with its eleven satellite branches, considers itself the second largest Muslim mosque community in the country. While the state's Jewish population is small, organized Jewish sites date to 1789 with Congregation Beth Ahabah. Megachurches in the Commonwealth include Thomas Road Baptist Church, Immanuel Bible Church, and McLean Bible Church, and the twenty percent who describe themselves as unaffiliated also include seven percent who say religion is important to them, but may not attend regular services with formal membership. Several Christian universities are also based in the state, including Regent University, Liberty University, and the University of Lynchburg.


title: Virginia

text: Virginia's economy has diverse sources of income, including local and federal government, military, farming and high-tech. The state's average earnings per job was $63,281, the 11th-highest nationwide, and the gross domestic product (GDP) was $476.4billion in 2018, the 13th-largest among U.S. states. Prior to the COVID-19 recession, in March 2020, Virginia had 4.36million people employed with an unemployment rate of 2.9%, but jobless claims due to the virus soared over 10% in early April 2020, before leaving off around 5% in November 2020. In October 2022, it was 2.7%, which was the 9th-lowest nationwide.


title: Virginia

text: Virginia has a median household income of $72,600, 11th-highest nationwide, and a poverty rate of 10.7%, 12th-lowest nationwide, . Montgomery County outside Blacksburg has the highest poverty rate in the state, with 28.5% falling below the U.S. Census poverty thresholds. Loudoun County meanwhile has the highest median household income in the nation, and the wider Northern Virginia region is among the highest-income regions nationwide. , six of the twenty highest-income counties in the United States, including the two highest, as well as three of the fifty highest-income towns, are all located in Northern Virginia. Though the Gini index shows Virginia has less income inequality than the national average, the state's middle class is also smaller than the majority of states.


title: Virginia

text: Virginia's business environment has been ranked highly by various publications. In 2021, CNBC named Virginia their Top State for Business, with its deductions being mainly for the high cost of living, while "Forbes" magazine ranked it fourth, though number one in quality of life. Additionally, in 2014 a survey of 12,000 small business owners found Virginia to be one of the most friendly states for small businesses. Oxfam America however ranked Virginia as only the 23rd-best state to work in, with pluses for new worker protections from sexual harassment and pregnancy discrimination, but negatives for laws on organized labor and the low tipped employee minimum wage of $2.13. Virginia has been an employment-at-will state since 1906 and a "right to work" state since 1947, and though state minimum wage increased to $11 in 2021 and will increase to $12 in 2023, farm and tipped workers are specifically excluded.


title: Virginia

text: Government agencies directly employ around 700,000 people, almost 17% of all employees, . Approximately twelve percent of all U.S. federal procurement money is spent in Virginia, the second-highest amount after California. , 124,870 active-duty personnel and 98,506 civilians work directly for the U.S. Department of Defense across the 27 military bases in the state and the headquarters at the Pentagon, and over 139,000 Virginians work for defense contracting firms, which received over $37.4 billion worth of contracts in the 2018 fiscal year. Virginia has one of the highest concentrations of veterans of any state, and the Hampton Roads area has the largest concentration of military personnel and assets of any metropolitan area in the world.


title: Virginia

text: Other large federal agencies in Northern Virginia include the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, the National Science Foundation and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria, the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in Bailey's Crossroads. Virginia's state government employs over 106,000 public employees, who combined have a median income of $52,401 , with the Departments of Education and of Transportation being the largest by expenditure.


title: Virginia

text: Virginia was home to 653,193 separate firms in the 2012 U.S. Census Survey of Business Owners, with 54% of those majority male-owned and 36.2% majority female-owned. Approximately 28.3% of firms were also majority minority-owned, and 11.7% were veteran-owned. Twenty-one Fortune 500 companies are headquartered in Virginia , with the largest companies by revenue being Freddie Mac, General Dynamics, and Capital One. The largest by their number of employees are Dollar Tree in Chesapeake and Hilton Worldwide Holdings in McLean.


title: Virginia

text: Virginia has the third highest concentration of technology workers and the fifth highest overall number among U.S. states , with the 451,268 tech jobs accounting for 11.1% of all jobs in the state and earning a median salary of $98,292. Many of these jobs are in Northern Virginia, which hosts a large number of software, communications, and cybersecurity companies, particularly in the Dulles Technology Corridor and Tysons Corner areas. Amazon additionally selected Crystal City for its HQ2 in 2018, while Google expanded their Reston offices in 2019. Virginia became the world's largest data center market in 2016, with Loudoun County specifically branding itself "Data Center Alley" due to the roughly in use for data. In 2020, the state had the second highest average internet download speeds in the United States, with 193.1 Mbit/s. Computer chips first became the state's highest-grossing export in 2006, and had a total export value of $827million in 2020. Though in the top quartile for diversity based on the Simpson index, only 26% of tech employees in Virginia are women, and only 13% are Black or African American.


title: Virginia

text: Tourism in Virginia supported an estimated 234,000 jobs in 2018, making tourism the state's fifth largest industry. It generated $26billion, an increase of 4.4% from 2017. The state was eighth nationwide in domestic travel spending in 2018, with Arlington County the top tourist destination in the state by domestic spending, followed by Fairfax County, Loudoun County, and Virginia Beach. Virginia also saw 1.1million international tourists in 2018, a five percent increase from 2017.


title: Virginia

text: , agriculture occupied 28% of the land in Virginia with 7.8million acres (12,188 sq mi; 31,565 km) of farmland. Nearly 54,000 Virginians work on the state's 43,225 farms, which average . Though agriculture has declined significantly since 1960 when there were twice as many farms, it remains the largest single industry in Virginia, providing for over 334,000 jobs. Soybeans were the most profitable crop in Virginia in 2017, ahead of corn and cut flowers as other leading agricultural products. However, the ongoing China-U.S. trade war led many Virginia farmers to plant cotton instead of soybeans in 2019. Though it is no longer the primary crop, Virginia is still the third-largest producer of tobacco in the United States.


title: Virginia

text: Virginia is also the country's third-largest producer of seafood , with sea scallops, oysters, Chesapeake blue crabs, menhaden, and hardshell clams as the largest seafood harvests by value, and France, Canada, and Hong Kong as the top export destinations. Commercial fishing supports 18,220 jobs , while recreation fishing supports another 5,893. Eastern oyster harvests had increased from 23,000 bushels in 2001 to over 500,000 in 2013, but fell to 248,347 in 2019 because of low salinity in coastal waters due to heavy spring rains. Those same rains however made 2019 a record wine harvest for vineyards in the Northern Neck and along the Blue Ridge Mountains, which also attract 2.3million tourists annually. Virginia has the seventh-highest number of wineries in the nation, with 307 . Cabernet franc and Chardonnay are the most grown varieties.


title: Virginia

text: State income tax is collected from those with incomes above a filing threshold; there are five income brackets, with rates ranging from 2.0% to 5.75% of taxable income. The state sales and use tax rate is 4.3%. There is an additional 1% local tax, for a total of a 5.3% combined sales tax on most Virginia purchases. The sales tax rate is higher in three regions: Northern Virginia (6%), Hampton Roads (6%) and the Historic Triangle (7%). Unlike the majority of states, Virginia has a sales tax on groceries, but at a lower rate than the general sales tax; the sales tax for food and certain essential personal hygiene goods is 2.5%.


title: Virginia

text: Virginia's property tax is set and collected at the local government level and varies throughout the Commonwealth. Real estate is also taxed at the local level based on one hundred percent of fair market value. As of fiscal year 2018, the median real estate tax rate per $100 of assessed taxable value was $1.07 for cities, $0.67 for counties, and $0.17 for towns; town rates are lower because towns (unlike cities) have a narrow range of responsibilities and are subordinate to counties. Of local government tax revenue, about 61% is generated from real property taxes; about 24% from tangible personal property, sales and use, and business license tax; and 15% from other taxes (such as restaurant meal taxes, public service corporation property tax, consumer utility tax, and hotel tax).


title: Virginia

text: Modern Virginian culture has many sources, and is part of the culture of the Southern United States. The Smithsonian Institution divides Virginia into nine cultural regions, and in 2007 used their annual Folklife Festival to recognize the substantial contributions of England and Senegal on Virginian culture. Virginia's culture was popularized and spread across America and the South by figures such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Robert E. Lee. Their homes in Virginia represent the birthplace of America and the South.


title: Virginia

text: Besides the general cuisine of the Southern United States, Virginians maintain their own particular traditions. Virginia wine is made in many parts of the Commonwealth. Smithfield ham, sometimes called "Virginia ham", is a type of country ham which is protected by state law, and can be produced only in the town of Smithfield. Virginia furniture and architecture are typical of American colonial architecture. Thomas Jefferson and many of the Commonwealth's early leaders favored the Neoclassical architecture style, leading to its use for important state buildings. The Pennsylvania Dutch and their style can also be found in parts of the Commonwealth.


title: Virginia

text: Literature in Virginia often deals with the Commonwealth's extensive and sometimes troubled past. The works of Pulitzer Prize winner Ellen Glasgow often dealt with social inequalities and the role of women in her culture. Glasgow's peer and close friend James Branch Cabell wrote extensively about the changing position of gentry in the Reconstruction era, and challenged its moral code with "Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice". William Styron approached history in works such as "The Confessions of Nat Turner" and "Sophie's Choice". Tom Wolfe has occasionally dealt with his southern heritage in bestsellers like "I Am Charlotte Simmons". Mount Vernon native Matt Bondurant received critical acclaim for his historic novel "The Wettest County in the World" about moonshiners in Franklin County during prohibition. Virginia also names a state Poet Laureate.


title: Virginia

text: Virginia ranks near the middle of U.S. states in terms of public spending on the arts , at just over half of the national average. The state government does fund some institutions, including the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Science Museum of Virginia. Other museums include the popular Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air and Space Museum and the Chrysler Museum of Art. Besides these sites, many open-air museums are located in the Commonwealth, such as Colonial Williamsburg, the Frontier Culture Museum, and various historic battlefields. The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities works to improve the Commonwealth's civic, cultural, and intellectual life.


title: Virginia

text: Theaters and venues in the Commonwealth are found both in the cities and in suburbs. The Harrison Opera House, in Norfolk, is home of the Virginia Opera. The Virginia Symphony Orchestra operates in and around Hampton Roads. Resident and touring theater troupes operate from the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton. The Barter Theatre in Abingdon, designated the State Theatre of Virginia, won the first Regional Theatre Tony Award in 1948, while the Signature Theatre in Arlington won it in 2009. There is also a Children's Theater of Virginia, Theatre IV, which is the second largest touring troupe nationwide. Notable music performance venues include The Birchmere, the Landmark Theater, and Jiffy Lube Live. Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts is located in Vienna and is the only national park intended for use as a performing arts center.


title: Virginia

text: Many award-winning traditional musical artists and internationally successful popular music acts, as well as Hollywood actors come from Virginia. Virginia is known for its tradition in the music genres of old-time string and bluegrass, with groups such as the Carter Family and Stanley Brothers. The state's African tradition is found through gospel, blues, and shout bands, with both Ella Fitzgerald and Pearl Bailey coming from Newport News. Contemporary Virginia is also known for folk rock artists like Dave Matthews and Jason Mraz, hip hop stars like Pharrell Williams, Missy Elliott and Pusha T, as well as thrash metal groups like GWAR and Lamb of God. Several members of country music band Old Dominion grew up in the Roanoke area, and took their band name from Virginia's state nickname.


title: Virginia

text: Many counties and localities host county fairs and festivals. The Virginia State Fair is held at the Meadow Event Park every September. Also in September is the Neptune Festival in Virginia Beach, which celebrates the city, the waterfront, and regional artists. Norfolk's Harborfest, in June, features boat racing and air shows. Fairfax County also sponsors Celebrate Fairfax! with popular and traditional music performances. The Virginia Lake Festival is held during the third weekend in July in Clarksville. On the Eastern Shore island of Chincoteague the annual Pony Penning of feral Chincoteague ponies at the end of July is a unique local tradition expanded into a week-long carnival.


title: Virginia

text: The Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival is a six-day festival held annually in Winchester which includes parades and bluegrass concerts. The Old Time Fiddlers' Convention in Galax, begun in 1935, is one of the oldest and largest such events worldwide, and Wolf Trap hosts the Wolf Trap Opera Company, which produces an opera festival every summer. The Blue Ridge Rock Festival has operated since 2017, and has brought as many as 33,000 concert-goers to the Blue Ridge Amphitheater in Pittsylvania County. Two important film festivals, the Virginia Film Festival and the VCU French Film Festival, are held annually in Charlottesville and Richmond, respectively.


title: Virginia

text: The Hampton Roads area is the 42nd-largest media market in the United States as ranked by Nielsen Media Research, while the Richmond-Petersburg area is 54th and Roanoke-Lynchburg is 69th . Northern Virginia is part of the much larger Washington, D.C. media market, which is the country's 7th-largest.


title: Virginia

text: There are 36 television stations in Virginia, representing each major U.S. network, part of 42 stations which serve Virginia viewers including those broadcasting from neighboring jurisdictions. According the Federal Communications Commission, 595 FCC-licensed FM radio stations broadcast in Virginia, with 239 such AM stations . The nationally available Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is headquartered in Arlington. Independent PBS affiliates exist throughout Virginia, and the Arlington PBS member station WETA-TV produces programs such as the "PBS NewsHour" and "Washington Week".


title: Virginia

text: The most circulated native newspapers in the Commonwealth are Norfolk's "The Virginian-Pilot" with around 132,000 subscribers, the "Richmond Times-Dispatch" with 86,219, and "The Roanoke Times" . "USA Today", which is headquartered in McLean, has seen its daily subscription number decline significantly from over 500,000 in 2019 to just over 180,000 in 2021, but is still the third-most circulated paper nationwide. "USA Today" is the flagship publication of Gannett, Inc., which merged with GateHouse Media in 2019, and operates over one hundred local newspapers nationwide. In Northern Virginia, "The Washington Post" is the dominant newspaper and provides local coverage for the region. "Politico", which covers national politics, has its offices in Rosslyn.


title: Virginia

text: Virginia's educational system consistently ranks in the top five states on the U.S. Department of Education's National Assessment of Educational Progress, with Virginia students outperforming the average in all subject areas and grade levels tested. The 2020 "Quality Counts" report ranked Virginia's K–12 education eighth in the country, with a letter grade of B. All school divisions must adhere to educational standards set forth by the Virginia Department of Education, which maintains an assessment and accreditation regime known as the Standards of Learning to ensure accountability.


title: Virginia

text: Public K–12 schools in Virginia are generally operated by the counties and cities, and not by the state. a total of 1,290,576 students were enrolled in 2,293 local and regional schools in the Commonwealth, including eight charter schools, and an additional 98 alternative and special education centers across 133 school divisions. 2018 marked the first decline in overall enrollment in public schools, by just over 2,000 students, since 1984. Besides the general public schools in Virginia, there are Governor's Schools and selective magnet schools. The Governor's Schools are a collection of more than forty regional high schools and summer programs intended for gifted students. The Virginia Council for Private Education oversees the regulation of 483 state accredited private schools. An additional 17,283 students receive homeschooling.


title: Virginia

text: In 2019, 91.5% of high school students graduated on-time after four years, an increase of two percent from 2013, and 89.3% of adults over the age 25 had their high school diploma. Virginia has one of the smaller racial gaps in graduation rates among U.S. states, with 89.7% of Black students graduating on time, compared to 94.7% of white students and 97.5% of Asian students. Despite ending school segregation in the 1960s, seven percent of Virginia's public schools were rated as "intensely segregated" by The Civil Rights Project at UCLA in 2019, and the number has risen since 1989, when only three percent were. Virginia has comparatively large public school districts, typically comprising entire counties or cities, and this helps mitigate funding gaps seen in other states such that non-white districts average slightly more funding, $255 per student , than majority white districts. Elementary schools, with Virginia's smallest districts, were found to be more segregated than state middle or high schools by a 2019 VCU study.


title: Virginia

text: , Virginia has the sixth highest percent of residents with bachelor's degrees or higher, with 39.5%. The Department of Education recognizes 163 colleges and universities in Virginia. In the 2021 "U.S. News & World Report" ranking of national public universities, the University of Virginia is ranked 4th, the College of William and Mary is 11th, Virginia Tech is 29th, George Mason University is 65th, and Virginia Commonwealth University is 77th. James Madison University is also ranked the third best regional university in the South. There are 124 private institutions in the state, including Washington and Lee University and the University of Richmond, which are ranked as the country's 9th and 22nd best liberal arts colleges respectively.


title: Virginia

text: Virginia Tech and Virginia State University are the state's land-grant universities, and Virginia State is one of five historically black colleges and universities in Virginia. The Virginia Military Institute is the oldest state military college. Virginia also operates 23 community colleges on 40 campuses which enrolled 218,985 degree-seeking students during the 2020–2021 school year. In 2021, the state made community college free for most low- and middle-income students. George Mason University had the largest on-campus enrollment at 38,542 students , though the private Liberty University had the largest total enrollment in the state, with 88,283 online and 15,105 on-campus students in Lynchburg .


title: Virginia

text: Virginia has a mixed health record. The state was ranked 16th in overall health outcomes and 18th for healthy behaviors by the 2021 United Health Foundation's Health Rankings. Among U.S. states, Virginia has the eighteenth lowest rate of premature deaths, with 6,790 per 100,000, and an infant mortality rate of 5.61 per 1,000 live births. The rate of uninsured Virginians dropped to 7.9% in 2020, following an expansion of Medicare the year before. Falls Church and Loudoun County were both ranked in the top ten healthiest communities in 2020 by "U.S. News & World Report".


title: Virginia

text: There are however racial and social health disparities. With high rates of heart disease and diabetes, African Americans in Virginia had an average life expectancy four years lower than whites and twelve years lower than Asian Americans and Latinos in 2017, and were disproportionately affected by COVID-19 during the coronavirus pandemic. African-American mothers are also three times more likely to die while giving birth in the state. Mortality rates among white middle-class Virginians have also been rising, with drug overdose, alcohol poisoning, and suicide as leading causes. Suicides in the state increased by 11% between 2009 and 2021, while deaths from drug overdoses more than doubled in that time.


title: Virginia

text: Weight is an issue for many Virginians, and 32.2% of adults and 14.9% of 10- to 17-year-olds are obese . Additionally, 35% of adults are overweight and 23.3% do not exercise regularly. Smoking in bars and restaurants was banned in January 2010, and the percent of tobacco smokers in the state has declined from 19% in that year to 13.6% in 2021, but an additional 5.2% use e-cigarettes. Virginia does have above average percentage of residents who receive annual immunizations, ranking eleventh for yearly flu vaccinations. In 2008, Virginia became the first U.S. state to mandate the HPV vaccine for girls for school attendance, and 56.4% of adolescents have the vaccine. , 73.5% of Virginians had received a full COVID-19 vaccine.


title: Virginia

text: The Virginia Board of Health regulates health care facilities, and there are ninety hospitals in Virginia with a combined 17,706 hospital beds . Notable examples include Inova Fairfax Hospital, the largest hospital in the Washington Metropolitan Area, and the VCU Medical Center, located on the medical campus of Virginia Commonwealth University. The University of Virginia Medical Center, part of the University of Virginia Health System, is highly ranked in endocrinology according to "U.S. News & World Report". Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, a teaching institution of Eastern Virginia Medical School, was the site of the first successful in-vitro fertilization program. Virginia has a ratio of 241 primary care physicians per 10,000 residents, the fifteenth worst rate nationally, and only 207.8 mental health providers per that number, the thirteenth worst nationwide. , the state's eight public mental health care facilities were 96% full, causing delays in admissions.


title: Virginia

text: Because of the 1932 Byrd Road Act, the state government controls most of Virginia's roads, instead of a local county authority as is usual in other states. , the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) owns and operates of the total of roads in the state, making it the third largest state highway system in the United States. Traffic on Virginia's roads is among the worst in the nation according to the 2019 American Community Survey. The average commute time of 28.7 minutes is the eighth longest among U.S. states, and the Washington Metropolitan Area, which includes Northern Virginia, has the second worst rate of traffic congestion among U.S. cities. About 9.2% of workers in Virginia reported carpooling to work in 2019, and Virginia hit peak car usage before the year 2000, making it one of the first such states.


title: Virginia

text: About 4.4% of Virginians commute on public transit, and there were over 171.9 million public transit trips in Virginia in 2019, over 62% of which were done on the Washington Metro transit system, which serves Arlington and Alexandria, and extends into Loudoun and Fairfax Counties. Virginia has Amtrak passenger rail service along several corridors, and Virginia Railway Express (VRE) maintains two commuter lines into Washington, D.C. from Fredericksburg and Manassas. VRE averaged over 90,000 weekly riders in 2019, but saw a dramatic 90% decline in ridership due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Major freight railroads in Virginia include Norfolk Southern and CSX Transportation, and in 2021 the state finalized a deal to purchase of track and over of right of way from CSX for future passenger rail service. Commuter buses include the Fairfax Connector, FRED buses in Fredericksburg, and OmniRide in Prince William County, while the state-run Virginia Breeze buses run four inter-city routes from Washington, D.C. to Bristol, Blacksburg, Martinsville, and Danville. VDOT operates several free ferries throughout Virginia, the most notable being the Jamestown Ferry which connects Jamestown to Scotland Wharf across the James River.