First Landing State Park
— the shore the colonists saw first.
Not only on a wall.
First Landing State Park, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“Cypress swamp on the Chesapeake side of Cape Henry, with bald cypress and Spanish moss growing further north than they really should. The first Virginia state park, opened in 1936 by a CCC crew whose stonework still holds the trails together. A few miles in, the bay opens. Long Creek runs dark. The water and the woods sit closer together than feels possible this close to a city. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
First Landing State Park covers 2,888 acres on Cape Henry at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, named for the April 1607 landfall of the Virginia Company colonists before they sailed up the James River to Jamestown. It holds nineteen miles of trail through cypress swamp, salt marsh, maritime forest, and bayfront dune. Bald cypress and Spanish moss reach near their northern range here. The park was Virginia's first, dedicated June 15, 1936, and built largely by Civilian Conservation Corps Company 1371.
The park has a Chesapeake Bay shoreline on the north side and a tidal swamp on the south, drained by Broad Bay and Long Creek into Lynnhaven Bay. The Bald Cypress Trail loops 1.5 miles through standing black water where cypress knees break the surface. Long Creek Trail, at five miles, is the longest in the park. Paddlers can put in at the 64th Street launch and reach the open bay through a tidal estuary used commercially for Lynnhaven oysters since the colonial era.
First Landing is open year-round, dawn to dusk, with a vehicle entry fee at the main gate off Shore Drive (US 60). The Trail Center sits a short walk from the 64th Street lot and stocks maps for the nineteen-mile trail network. Cabins and a campground line the bayfront. The Cape Henry Memorial Cross, run by the National Park Service across Atlantic Avenue on the Fort Story side, marks the actual 1607 landing point and requires a separate base-access pass.
