City of Portsmouth careers

Portsmouth sits on the Elizabeth River in Virginia's Hampton Roads, and its founding is dated to the day: February 27, 1752, when Colonel William Crawford established the town by act of the General Assembly, named it for Portsmouth, England, and dedicated the four corners of High and Court Streets to a church, a market, a courthouse, and a jail.

The water has driven its story ever since. Gosport Shipyard was established next door in 1767 and grew into today's Norfolk Naval Shipyard, where Drydock No. 1, the first drydock used in the United States, is still in service and holds National Historic Landmark status. The naval hospital here is the oldest in the country, the CSS Virginia, the first ironclad to fight a naval battle, was rebuilt at the yard from the burned Merrimac, and at the peak of World War II the shipyard employed 43,000 people and turned out 101 new ships. The keel of the frigate Chesapeake, the first ship built at the yard for the U.S. Navy, was laid at Gosport too. Portsmouth's city government serves the community wrapped around that history, a navy town in the plainest sense, and its own detailed civic timeline is a good sign of how seriously the city takes its 270-plus years.