Editing Yorktown, Virginia (section)

==History==
[[Image:Surrender of Lord Cornwallis.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|Surrender of [[Lord Cornwallis]] at Yorktown in 1781 depicted in a painting by [[John Trumbull]]]]
Yorktown was named for the ancient city of [[York]] in [[Yorkshire]], [[North England|Northern England]].  It was founded in 1691 as a port on the [[York River (Virginia)|York River]] for English colonists to export tobacco to Europe. The lawyer Thomas Ballard was the principal founder of the city along with Joseph Ring.<ref>James Branch Cabell, ''The Majors and Their Marriages,'' pp. 58-59.</ref> It became the county seat in 1696, and although it never had more than about 200 houses its trade was considerable until the American Revolutionary War.<ref>{{Cite EB1911|wstitle=Yorktown|volume=28|page=936}}</ref> It was called "York" until after the war, when the name "Yorktown" came into common use.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cOBBAAAAMAAJ&q=York+Yorktown+Nelson&pg=PA185|title=Genealogy of the Page Family in Virginia|last1=Page|first1=Richard Channing Moore|year=1893}}</ref>

The town reached the height of its development around 1750, when it had 250 to 300 buildings and a population of almost 2,000 people. It was the base of [[Kingdom of Great Britain|British]] General [[Charles Cornwallis]] during the 1781 [[siege of Yorktown|siege]], which was the last major battle of the [[American Revolutionary War]].

When waterways were critical to transportation, Yorktown was thought to occupy a strategic location controlling upstream portions of the York River and its tributaries and their access to the [[Chesapeake Bay]]. In his ''Notes on the State of Virginia'' published in 1781–82, [[Thomas Jefferson]] noted that the York River at Yorktown "affords the best harbour in the state for vessels of the largest size. The river there narrows to the width of a mile, and is contained within very high banks, close under which the vessels may ride."<ref>[http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefVirg.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all Notes on the State of Virginia<!-- Bot generated title -->] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130829133128/http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefVirg.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all |date=August 29, 2013 }}</ref>

The population dropped in Yorktown and other areas of the mostly rural peninsula after the state's capital was relocated from Williamsburg to [[Richmond, Virginia|Richmond]] on the [[James River]], attracting more development there. In addition, tobacco exhausted the soil, and planters shifted to mixed crops, which required less slave labor. Many generations of younger sons migrated out of the Tidewater area to new lands further west, into the [[Piedmont (United States)|Piedmont]] and beyond to Kentucky, Tennessee and what became the Northwest Territory.

During the 1862 [[Peninsula Campaign]] of the [[American Civil War]] (1861–1865), the town was captured by the Union following the [[Siege of Yorktown (1862)|Siege and Battle of Yorktown]]. It was used as a base by the [[Union (American Civil War)|Union]] [[Army of the Potomac]] under General [[George B. McClellan]] to launch an attack on Richmond.

One of Yorktown's sister cities is [[Zweibrücken]], Germany. During the American Revolutionary War, the [[Royal Deux-Ponts Regiment]] was commanded by Comte [[Christian von Zweibrücken (1752–1817)|Christian de Forbach]] (son of [[Christian IV, Count Palatine of Zweibrücken]], and the deputy commander was his brother [[Wilhelm von Zweibrücken|Philippe Guillaume (later renamed to Wilhelm)]]. This was one of the four regiments that arrived at [[Newport, Rhode Island]] with [[Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau|Rochambeau]] in 1780. It participated on the side of Americans in the [[Siege of Yorktown|Battle of Yorktown]] in 1781.

Yorktown's other sister city is [[Port-Vendres]], France. It's from this small port on the Mediterranean coast that the French expeditionary force left Europe to fight the British army in America.

During [[World War I]], to support Atlantic defenses, the federal government in 1918 acquired about {{convert|13000|acre|km2}} for development by the US Navy as Mine Depot, Yorktown. This large installation straddled York, [[Warwick County, Virginia|Warwick]] and [[James City County, Virginia|James City]] counties. It has since expanded and been developed as [[Naval Weapons Station Yorktown]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=38849|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604171557/http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=38849|url-status=dead|archive-date=June 4, 2011|title=Naval Weapons Station Yorktown Celebrates 90 Years of Ordnance Support|author=This story was written Mark O. Piggott, Naval Weapons Station Yorktown Public Affairs}}</ref> Cheatham Annex, a facility which was developed over the former town of [[Penniman, Virginia|Penniman]], is also included as part of the base.

[[Training Center Yorktown]] serves as a training school for the [[United States Coast Guard]]. Also relatively close to Yorktown are [[Camp Peary]] (in York County), the [[Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company|Huntington Ingalls Industries Newport News Shipbuilding]] yards and facilities, and [[Fort Eustis]] Army base (both in [[Newport News, Virginia|Newport News]]). Other major installations in the area are [[Naval Station Norfolk]], located at [[Norfolk, Virginia|Norfolk]], and [[Langley Air Force Base]] in [[Hampton, Virginia|Hampton]].