What was to rescue Virginia and turn it into a permanent colony was tobacco. This was a Native American crop, but the variety grown in native fields in Virginia (Nicotinia rustica) was not the variety that would make fortunes for Virginia planters. Instead, a milder type (Nicotinia tobacum) perfected by the Spanish in their West Indian colonies was in demand by a growing number of users (addicts?) in Europe.

John Rolfe managed to have seeds smuggled to Virginia in 1611. After a few years of experimentation, tobacco was adapted to Virginia's soils and climate and commercial production begun. In 1617, 20,000 pounds were shipped to England from Virginia; that number doubled the following year. Tobacco became the mainstay of the colony and the state the succeeded. It continues to this day as the most important (legal) agricultural crop of Virginia in terms of value.

Tobacco is a labor intensive crop and a crop which can quickly exhaust the natural fertility of soil. These two characteristics contributed to tobacco's huge impact on determining settlement patterns and land use practices in colonial times. Its imprint remains strong on the landscapes of today.

Commercially successful in the production of tobacco required 1) people and 2) land. The colony, until 1624 under the control of the Virginia Company of London, experimented with various ways to attract settlers. Land in abundance was what the company possessed and could use to attract newcomers.

The first problem was how and to whom to best distribute land. In 1616 the Company offered each shareholder 100 acres in the James River Valley. Since shareholders were typically the well off in England, there were few takers. The next year, "corporate colonies" were tried. This amounted to setting up small, private joint-stock associations in which several people could combine resources and purchase a share in the company. Together they were entitled to 100 acres in Virginia. This was a somewhat more successful approach and the small settlements that arose on both sides of the James became known as "hundreds." The Company stipulated that hundreds be located 10 miles apart to unsure enough land for many years of tobacco production. This criterion left the settlements vulnerable to attack, as the Massacre of 1624 proved.

The head right system, which was the next method of distributing land, brought the most people to Virginia because it allowed the poor of England to come. Under this system, anyone who afford passage would be given 50 acres of land. Paying someone else's way to the New World entitled a person to an additional 50 acres. It was this latter condition that stimulated migration to Virginia. Those who could not afford passage themselves could have someone else pay their way and then work off the debt. Such people became indentured servants, contracting themselves to a master for 4-5 years of often very hard labor. In the 1600s, most of the people who came to Virginia came as indentured servants.

The second problem was where to locate each 50-acre allotment. There was no pre-planning. Instead someone with title to 50 acres has to search out a suitable parcel. There were no regulations regarding shape or order in which land was to be settled. The only stipulation was that a new parcel not encroach upon land already claimed by some else. Every potential grower of tobacco needed the same things: floodplain acreage for tobacco, upland acreage for timber and other crops; and access to a navigable stream.

A prospective settler would set out and find the piece of land he wanted, identifying the boundaries with piles of stones or some such visible markers. Then the land would be surveyed and a deed drawn up. The survey technique used is known as metes and bounds: one determines angles and paces off the distances between markers already in place to record the boundaries of irregularly shaped parcels. Once the survey information is complete it is filed at a courthouse and a deed to the land issued.

All of the original 13 American colonies used the metes and bounds system for laying out land parcels. The result is a patchwork quilt appearance to the land with fields of different shapes and sizes; roads constructed along the edges of land parcels intersect one another at odd angles. [Contrast this pattern to the land patterns west of the Alleghenies, which was settled after the American Revolution. That land was surveyed prior to actual occupation and in a very systematic manner encouraged by Thomas Jefferson: the cardinal directions (north, south, east and west) determined direction and the borders of parcels corresponded to parallels and meridians. The result of this US Land Ordinance system, still very visible when you fly over the US, is square plots of land all the same size and roads that intersect at right angles.]