Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Virginia Peninsula is a natural landform in southeast Virginia, bounded by the York River, the James River, Hampton Roads, and the Chesapeake Bay. It is home to four independent cities (Hampton, Newport News, Poquoson, and Williamsburg) and two counties (James City County and York County), and forms the northern part of the Hampton Roads metropolitan area, which has a population of about 1.8 million.
Jamestown, established in 1607 on the Virginia Peninsula, was the first permanent English settlement in North America. Despite its founding importance, it was largely abandoned as a town after 1699 when the colonial capital shifted to nearby Williamsburg.
In 1862, the Union Army launched the Peninsula Campaign from Fort Monroe to capture Richmond. The campaign opened with the Battle of Hampton Roads, the first clash between ironclad warships, fought near the mouth of the James River. General George B. McClellan's forces pushed Confederate troops to the outskirts of Richmond but were halted by the swampy Chickahominy River, prolonging the war by an estimated three years.
Collis P. Huntington, through the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway and his Old Dominion Land Company, completed the Peninsula Extension of the C&O to Newport News Point in 1881. Within fifteen years that terminus grew from a rural Warwick County farm community into the independent city of Newport News by 1896, anchored by what became the world's largest shipyard, Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company.
The restoration of Colonial Williamsburg, which began in 1926, was championed by the Reverend Dr. W.A.R. Goodwin and carried out with the financial backing of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and the active participation of his wife, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. It became one of the largest historic restorations ever undertaken.
Through the second half of the 20th century, a wave of consolidations reshaped the Peninsula's political map. Elizabeth City County and Warwick County both merged into independent cities in 1952, and the City of Warwick then merged into Newport News in 1958. In total, at least eleven shires, counties, towns, and cities have ceased to exist under their original names in the Virginia Peninsula area.