Gaited Trail Horse

After the first permanent English-speaking settlement was established in April 1607, at Jamestown, Virginia, Captain Christopher Newport led explorers northwest up the James River to an area inhabited by Powhatan Native Americans. The earliest European settlement in Central Virginia was in 1611 at Henricus, where the Falling Creek empties into the James River. In 1619 early Virginia Company settlers struggling to establish viable moneymaking industries established the Falling Creek Ironworks. After decades of territorial conflicts with native tribes, the Falls of the James saw more white settlement in the late 1600s and early 1700s. In 1737 planter William Byrd II commissioned Major William Mayo to lay out the original town grid.