Norfolk, VA
Opened 1938 as Norfolk Municipal. Adjacent to Naval Station Norfolk — the world's largest naval base, home port of the Atlantic Fleet and several aircraft carriers. The Hampton Roads region is the historic and contemporary heart of US Navy shipbuilding.
17.6 miles of bridge, trestle, and tunnel crossing the mouth of Chesapeake Bay between Virginia Beach and Cape Charles on the Delmarva Peninsula. Construction began October 1960, completed 42 months later, opened April 15, 1964. Designated one of the "Seven Engineering Wonders of the Modern World" by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1965 — and the year's outstanding civil engineering achievement. The crossing has 12 miles of low-level trestle bridges, two one-mile undersea tunnels (so ships can pass overhead), two high-clearance bridges, four 5.25-acre artificial islands marking the tunnel portals, and total height difference of six inches from south end to north end. Built entirely from revenue bonds — no federal, state, or local tax dollars. A parallel southbound span opened in 1999. As of 2021, more than 140 million vehicle crossings.
The largest living-history museum in the world — 301 acres restoring Virginia's 18th-century colonial capital, where costumed interpreters work as blacksmiths, printers, and silversmiths, fife-and-drum corps march the streets, and the daily drama of the run-up to revolution plays out in the Capitol and the Governor's Palace. Williamsburg was the capital of Virginia from 1699 to 1780, the largest and most influential of the colonies; Patrick Henry, Washington, and Jefferson all argued here. By the 1920s the old town had decayed; John D. Rockefeller Jr. quietly funded a massive restoration, and the result anchors the "Historic Triangle" with Jamestown (first permanent English settlement, 1607) and Yorktown (where the British surrendered in 1781) nearby.
Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. On December 17, 1903, Orville Wright flew 120 feet in 12 seconds — and changed the world. The granite memorial sits atop Big Kill Devil Hill where the Wrights practiced gliding. The original launch rail location is marked on the flat ground below. First Flight Airport (KFFA) has a 3000ft runway — you can literally land where they flew. The visitor center has a full-scale replica of the 1903 Flyer.
The tallest active sand dune system on the Atlantic coast rises right out of the Outer Banks at Nags Head — a great barren mountain of sand, 80 to 100 feet high depending on the wind, that migrates slowly southwest as the prevailing winds push it, swallowing whatever lies in its path. It's a "medano," a shifting hill of sand with no vegetation to anchor it. The steady ocean wind that built it makes it one of the best hang-gliding and kite-flying spots in the East — and it's the same wind, a few miles north up the same barrier island, that the Wright brothers came here to ride. From the crest you can see both the Atlantic and Roanoke Sound.