Newport News, a Witness to History Newport News was incorporated as a city in 1886, on land that was home since the early 1600s to English colonists, and before that, to Native Americans. Near Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown, Newport News figured in the Civil War as home to the Monitor-Merrimac naval battle in Hampton Roads waters and to the Peninsula Campaign. Entrepreneur Collis Huntington arrived in 1880, bringing the railroad, and by decade's end, the Newport News shipyard. The city boomed with naval ship demand in WWI and WWII. The Peninsula is home to NASA Langley Research Center and Langley Air Force Base, witnesses to a century of flight. The Virginia Peninsula's natural history is on display at the Virginia Living Museum, while the stuff of everday life is explored at Lee Hall and Newsome House Museum and Cultural Center. In and around Newport News, visit historic sites that span US history: • Peninsula Civil War Campaign • Colonial Williamsburg • War Museum of Virginia