Newport News

Newport News (/ˌnuːpɔːrt -, -pərt -/)[6] is an independent city in southeastern Virginia, United States. At the 2020 census, the population was 186,247.[5] Located in the Hampton Roads region, it is the fifth-most populous city in Virginia and 140th-most populous city in the United States. The city is at the southeastern end of the Virginia Peninsula, on the northern shore of the James River to the river's mouth on the harbor of Hampton Roads. Most of the area now known as Newport News was once a part of Warwick County, one of the eight original shires of Virginia formed in the British Colony of Virginia by order of Charles I of England in 1634. Newport News was a rural area of plantations and a small fishing village until after the American Civil War. In 1881, fifteen years of rapid development began under the leadership of Collis P. Huntington, whose new Peninsula Extension of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway opened up means of transportation for the railroad to bring West Virginia bituminous coal to port for coastal shipping. Within a few years, Huntington and his associates also built a large shipyard. Newport News was incorporated in 1896, the new incorporated town. In 1958, by mutual consent by referendum, Newport News was consolidated with Warwick, rejoining the two localities to approximately their pre-1896 geographic size under the more widely-known name of Newport News.[7]