JAMESTOWN Close to 16,000 people converged on Jamestown yesterday as the three-day festival for the settlement’s 400th anniversary stirred to life with music, re-enactments and a welcome from Gov. Timothy M. Kaine.

Organizers said the first-day attendance total included 8,000 people who bought tickets on arrival at the festival on a sunny, sultry day. Several people passed out in the 80-degree heat, but no serious injuries or incidents were reported.

Slideshow: Festival Stage Friday

Despite the surge of ticket purchases, the festival was about half-capacity. At no point did it seem crowded. Lines were short. Costumed employees at Jamestown Settlement and Historic Jamestowne said the crowd was only slightly bigger than on a normal busy day in peak season.

Ross O. Richardson, a spokesman for Jamestown 2007, the state organization running the festival, called yesterday’s turnout “gratifying.” He said about 16,000 tickets have been sold in advance for today, when musicians Bruce Hornsby, Ricky Skaggs and Chaka Khan are to perform at Jamestown.

An additional 13,000 tickets already have been pre-sold for the final day tomorrow, when President Bush will tour the historic areas of Jamestown and then give a speech at noon.

The weather forecast for today calls for a chance or rain and thunderstorms.

The festival offered odd as well as traditional angles on the Jamestown story. A genealogical research organization, ancestry.com, announced it had traced family connections between Bush and Pocahontas, between Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, and even, very distantly, between Bush and Vlad the Impaler.

The U.S. Postal Service unveiled a new, triangular 41-cent Jamestown commemorative stamp with a series of speeches. High drama it was not, but hundreds of stamp collectors stood in lines afterward in the hot sun to buy the stamps on the first day they were issued.

“The triangular shape is real unusual,” said Bob Ragland of Lynchburg, who said he has collected stamps for 35 years.

The new Anniversary Park—a collection of stages and tents erected in a field—looked at times yesterday like the State Fair on a slack day, complete with funnel cakes, roving costumed characters and long rows of portable toilets.

As evening descended, several thousand people gathered there in front of the main stage for a concert by the Virginia and Richmond Symphony Orchestras premiering four new works that conductor JoAnn Falletta described as having a “gentle, noble, respectful approach to the beginning of the country.”

The place still looked largely empty.

The orchestras sounded as if they’d always played together.

“It’s great, the way it should be,” said Sherie Aguirre, principal oboist for the Virginia Symphony, during the rehearsal. “It’s the size of a beefed-up major orchestra.”

The audience seemed to agree with the pre-concert sentiments of state Sen. Thomas K. Norment Jr., R-James City, who was host for the program.

“I can’t imagine that 400 years ago the colonists first evening in Jamestown was any more glorious than what we have tonight.”

All day long, visitors ringed an excavation site at the settler’s old fort on Jamestown Island, watching and listening to archaeologists, including William Kelso, who rediscovered the fort 13 years ago.

The discovery has expanded the knowledge of Jamestown and made a celebrity of Kelso. “You’re like a rock star,” one colleague told Kelso as he signed another copy of one of his books.

Many in the crowd yesterday were well aware of Kelso’s work. They were history enthusiasts who had visited Jamestown before, or who at least had done their homework. “We did a lot of reading before coming here,” said David O’Neill of Falls Church, who was accompanied by his wife and two children.

So did Marta Rog, one of 60 Polish-Americans from Chicago who made the trip together to honor several hard-working ancestors she said joined the colony in 1608. Unlike some of the colonists, the Poles were hardworking, she said. “They helped build Jamestown, they helped build America.”

Organizers of the festival took pains to note the contributions of the Africans and American Indians at Jamestown who helped shape the nation’s history. But the crowd yesterday was overwhelmingly white.

At a welcoming ceremony at Jamestown Island, members of Virginia Indian tribes performed a traditional welcome of chanting, dancing and drumming. Then Kaine spoke about the legacy of Jamestown.

The governor called the settlers global adventurers who laid the groundwork for modern U.S. democracy. Their independent spirit also planted the seeds for religious freedom and the philosophy of equal rights for all, he said, although the latter is still a work in progress.

A large force of state police manned the entrance and roads leading to Jamestown yesterday, and the Coast Guard monitored boat traffic on the James River near Jamestown.

Contact staff writer Katherine Calos at or (804) 649-6433.
Contact staff writer Bill Geroux at or (757) 625-1358.
Times-Dispatch staff writers Kiran Krishnamurthy and Sheena Jeffers contributed to this report.