Historic Triangle rolls out welcome mat for America’s 250th birthday

When The Cheese Shop first opened in Williamsburg in 1973, the United States was just three years away from celebrating its 1976 Bicentennial, a banner year for U.S. tourism.

Half a century later, the children of the shop’s founders are anticipating another big summer as visitors from the mid-Atlantic and the rest of the country return to the cradle of American democracy for the nation’s 250th birthday.

Mary Ellen Power, an owner of The Cheese Shop and the Fat Canary restaurant on Williamsburg’s fabled Duke of Gloucester Street, says about two-thirds of guests at their family-run businesses are repeat customers. The anticipated wave of new visitors for the United States’ Semiquincentennial are icing on the cake for this year’s patriotic celebrations.

Local businesses, as well as the city of Williamsburg and counties of York and James City, are capitalizing on this year’s tourism drive, which coincides with the 100th anniversary of Colonial Williamsburg.

“I think we’re going to have a great year. There’s a lot of positive energy,” Power says. “They’ve done a great job with marketing and planning fantastic events, music and fireworks.”

Edward Harris, CEO and president of Visit Williamsburg, the region’s destination marketing organization, says the duo of anniversaries create a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity to introduce first-time visitors to the Historic Triangle.

For those whose last visit was a school field trip to Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown or Yorktown, it’s also a chance to experience new attractions and leisure.

“It all started here,” Harris says. “We want to welcome people to come to the Historic Triangle for the first time, but also for people to come back and see all the great things that are here today, compared to when they may have visited in the past.”

Hopes for more visitors

The goal for many of the region’s businesses is to draw more visitors.

“Obviously we hope to see an increase in room stays, meals tax and those kinds of things,” says Carla Brittle, tourism and recreation centers administrator for James City County.

Harris says one of Visit Williamsburg’s main targets is a projected 4% to 5% increase in lodging tax receipts in the 2026 calendar year.

“We try to promote the whole destination to the world to get people to come visit and help our local economy,” he says. “We are in part funded by the lodging tax, so we’re trying to encourage people to spend the night in one of our hotels, motels, bed and breakfasts, Airbnbs, campgrounds [and] timeshares.”

Amy Demetry, owner of the Marl Inn Bed and Breakfast in Yorktown, says she’s seen the customer base at her bed-and-breakfast shift in recent months. Normally, most of her guests are people with family in the area or relatives of new Coast Guard graduates.

“We are definitely seeing an uptick in history travelers this year,” Demetry says.

Event programming for the year began in April with Revolutionary Rhythms, a three-day festival in James City County that featured mobile museum pop-ups, a 3D drone light show and performances by pop rock band Plain White T’s and legendary funk troupe Kool & The Gang.

James City County leaders decided to hold the event earlier in the year to precede Yorktown and Colonial Williamsburg’s plans for the summer and fall, Brittle says.

“We kind of put all our eggs in that basket,” she says. “We talked about what we wanted to do to celebrate, what our options were, and our board of supervisors at the time says James City County was the bedrock of the country, and that we needed to go big or go home.”

In addition to its yearly fall celebration of George Washington’s decisive 1781 victory over the British, Yorktown hosted the Sail Yorktown Festival in mid-June, inviting guests to climb aboard historical sloops, schooners and square-rigged merchant ships.

Brittle says Visit Williamsburg and other organizations have provided financial aid for the events. Virginia Humanities, for example, awarded a $10,000 grant for the sailing festival, which helped cover the cost of hiring the Williamsburg Symphony Orchestra to perform.

Other officials also spoke about how marketing and national publicity is uplifting small businesses in the area.

In May, NBC’s “Today” filmed live in Colonial Williamsburg, highlighting historical sites and businesses in the Historic Triangle. Visit Williamsburg sponsored the morning show’s special travel episode.

“I think for us, it was more of a big deal because we are such a small destination, so we got so much national publicity,” says Deirdre Roesch, marketing and communications manager for York County’s economic and tourism development department. “I think it will impact visitation overall, which was ultimately the goal of the segment.”

As guests at the Marl Inn watched “Today” over breakfast that morning, Mobjack Bay Coffee Roasters owner Celeste Gucanac was down the street taking orders for commemorative mugs that host Al Roker had just used to sample her brew.

“It was still live when we had a couple people call our shop from out of state to order them,” she says.
“Today” also showcased other locally made products, including beer from Alewerks Brewing Co. and fragrant gifts from Sweethaven Lavender farm.

A week after the TV appearance, Gucanac says there was a sense of collective pride from the national recognition she and her peers received.

“That, to my husband and I, is really special,” she says. “We work hard every day to do really good things, and to see the community feel proud of that has been really awesome, like a wind in your sail.”

Colonial capital

Colonial Williamsburg, of course, is at the heart of the year’s celebration.

Ron Hurst, chief mission officer for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, says Williamsburg is distinct from other revolutionary cities like Philadelphia and Boston because of the way it was preserved.

As the Colonial capital of Virginia and home to 1693-founded William & Mary, Williamsburg held tremendous political clout prior to the American Revolution.

“In the 1770s, Virginia was the largest, wealthiest and most influential of the 13 Colonies,” Hurst says. “It was terribly important for the independence movement that Virginia be involved, engaged and in agreement.”

After Virginia moved its capital to Richmond toward the end of the war, Williamsburg’s influence faded as other cities in the newly formed country leaped ahead in the 19th century.

“The town didn’t have the industry and the commerce, and therefore it didn’t have the financial resources to continually demolish and rebuild as most other cities of that day did,” Hurst says.

The Middle Peninsula region’s outlook changed with the onset of World War I, as its modern defense industry started taking shape.

That’s when the Rev. W.A.R. Goodwin, rector of the historic Bruton Parish Church, and other local leaders took interest in preserving Colonial-era buildings and landmarks in Williamsburg. Their drive led to a partnership with the philanthropist and Standard Oil heir John D. Rockefeller Jr., who provided significant financial support to restore Colonial Williamsburg and some of William & Mary’s historic buildings, including the Wren Building.

Today, Colonial Williamsburg manages its 300-acre site as a living-history museum, filled with costumed interpreters, historical trade and craft demonstrations, and museum exhibits, and the foundation is recognizing its centennial in November.

Beyond tourism, research and education are critical to the foundation’s mission.

“Since the 1980s, we have been seriously engaged in ensuring that we tell the whole story of early Williamsburg; free and enslaved, black and white, male and female, rich and poor. It’s really one of our tremendous assets,” Hurst says. “This is probably the only place in the country where you can tell a story about an entire town.”

Hurst says up to 35,000 people visit Colonial Williamsburg each Fourth of July. If grand holiday plans and higher-than-normal visitor counts to date are any indication, this year will be different.
“We’re expecting it to be a much larger number this year,” he says.

PBS plans to nationally telecast the local Independence Day celebration. Hurst says it will feature the foundation’s largest-ever fireworks display and special guests from film, music and politics.

“I think our core belief here really is that, in order to understand who we are as a nation,” Hurst says, “it’s important that we know where we came from, and gosh, there’s hardly anything more important than understanding your responsibilities as a citizen.”

Future opportunities

Laura Reeves, owner of the Williamsburg Manor Bed & Breakfast, has no illusions about her community’s status as a world-renowned historic site.

In 35 years of business, she’s catered events for Queen Elizabeth II, the Dalai Lama and President Donald Trump, along with the “Today” show’s cast and crew recently.

“That’s pretty impactful when you’ve done all those things,” says Reeves, who expects many tourism-related businesses to benefit from this year’s national attention and renewed curiosity.
“We want people to come back here … and realize that there’s so many activities and features,” she says. “It’s all well crafted.”

Reeves says the region’s tourism industry is boosted by having William & Mary and the nation’s largest outdoor museum at its center.

Still, she says, it’s become more competitive since the 1990s when AAA tourbooks guided road-tripping families to Williamsburg, a few years before the rise of online travel blogs, low-cost airlines and short-term rentals drew some visitors to new locations.

That’s where business and civic leaders see a growth opportunity.

In addition to the historic sites, Busch Gardens Williamsburg and Water Country USA, local tourism leaders are focusing promotion on restaurants, breweries, wineries and other hospitality-oriented businesses.

In 2025, real estate developer Lyle Schiavone reopened the 72-year-old Rochambeau Roadside Inn just outside Colonial Williamsburg, following a major renovation.

The 22-room inn now operates as a limited-service hotel with contactless check-in and a guest lobby serving snacks and beverages made by local businesses.

It’s his first foray into the hospitality industry, but longtime financial adviser Schiavone felt confident that the concept has met an unfilled need for the local tourism market.

After growing up in the area, attending William & Mary and getting married in town, he says he’s become more excited to invite far-flung guests.

“We think Williamsburg has become really cool in the last few years,” Schiavone says. “Everybody knows The Cheese Shop. It’s fantastic, right? But there’s Ember [restaurant] and Precarious [Beer Project]; there’s three or four new establishments for food, beer and drink that are right there in Merchants Square. They’re all new within the last year.”

In a five-year strategic plan adopted this spring by the Virginia Tourism Corp., research firm Hunden Partners reported that more full-service lodging and boutique hotels are needed statewide to draw more visitors.

Specifically for the Hampton Roads area, the plan says the region needs more boutique lodgings to compete with other Southern cities, such as Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia, to win over leisure travelers and group markets.

Schiavone has seen the state’s commitment to those recommendations materialize in the form of tax rebates and matching marketing grants from the state tourism corporation and Visit Williamsburg.
“We have been tied at the hip,” he says. “They have been an incredibly helpful resource. They always bring [social media] influencers to us, and I kind of joke that I think they need us just as much as we need them, because they love to show off the cool new thing.”

Sports tourism is another target for the region.

Amid all the planning around the Semiquincentennial, the region has been preparing for the Greater Williamsburg Sports and Events Center’s grand opening scheduled June 24.

Focused on youth athletics events and community sports, including basketball, pickleball, volleyball and soccer, the 200,000-square-foot center has already generated bookings for events that are still three years away, according to Visit Williamsburg CEO Harris.

Many in the region’s tourism trade say they’re optimistic about how things could shape out after this year.

“I would say that the Historic Triangle is going through a renaissance,” Harris says. “We anticipate there to be another increase in visitation in the years ahead based on the launching pad that 2026 is for us.”

Historic Triangle at a glance

• James City County: 80,777
• Williamsburg: 15,820
• York County: 73,053

• Kingsmill Resort
• Rochambeau Roadside Inn
• Williamsburg Inn
• Wedmore Place

• William & Mary
• Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
• Sentara Health
• York County
• Walmart
• Williamsburg-James City County School Board
• United Parks & Resorts

• Williamsburg Lodge,  Autograph Collection, 28,540 square feet of event space,  323 rooms
• DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Williamsburg, 42,012 square feet of event space,  295 rooms

• Fat Canary (American)
• Food for Thought (American)
• King’s Arms Tavern (Colonial chophouse)
• Riverwalk Restaurant (Seafood, steaks and pasta)
• Yorktown Pub (Seafood)