The Dividing Line Survey, 1728

Suffolk, VA

This boundary marker stands where two of America's foundational colonies meet, each summarizing its origin story on stone. Virginia points to Jamestown in 1607, the first permanent English colony, while North Carolina reaches back to the ill-fated 1585–87 Roanoke ventures before its own permanent settlement around 1650. The marker also notes North Carolina's Halifax Resolves of April 1775, when it became the first colony to formally authorize its delegates to vote for independence.

Winfall, NC

Quakers established the Old Neck Friends Meeting in the Albemarle region by 1680, making it one of the earliest organized religious communities in the North Carolina colony. From 1698 to 1785 it hosted the Society of Friends' Yearly Meeting, a central gathering for Quakers across the region, before the meeting was discontinued in 1797. The meeting house stood about a mile to the southeast.

Virginia Beach, VA

In the spring of 1607, three small ships carrying English colonists sponsored by the Virginia Company made their first North American landfall here at Cape Henry, at the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay. After coming ashore on April 26 and planting a cross, the weary travelers spent several weeks exploring before sailing up the James River to found their settlement. On May 13 they established Jamestown, which would endure as the first permanent English colony in America.

Hertford, NC

In the first years after the Constitution was ratified, the young federal government needed officers to make its authority real in each state. John Skinner became North Carolina's first United States marshal, serving from 1790 to 1794, and as a Federalist he took part in the state conventions of 1788 and 1789 that weighed whether North Carolina would join the new Union. He lived on land about twelve miles southeast of Hertford.