There are countless ways to get into Hampton Roads. But the most breathtaking has to be via the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. Billed as an engineering wonder, the 18-mile span is the world’s longest bridge-tunnel complex, crossing the point where the Atlantic meets the Bay. You can look over the guardrails as you cruise a few feet over the swells and watch fleets of sports fishermen, scads of sailboats, and an ever-present parade of freighters. If you get really lucky, you might catch the eerie specter of a submarine beginning one of its secret missions, the dark conning tower seeming to float above fog-socked seas as it spends its final few minutes on the surface. Keep an even sharper eye out in the summer for pods of porpoises, which will occasionally parallel your car for miles, their backs arching in and out of the water as they frolic.
When you finally get to Virginia Beach, Shore Drive is the link to the resort strand, and it’s one of the most beautiful approaches to any vacation destination. Thick woods, some laced with Spanish moss, line both sides of the roadway for miles, providing a lush counterpoint to the half hour you just spent over the bounding main. You’ll pass the wooded entrances to First Landing State Park and historic Fort Story before, suddenly, you emerge at the Oceanfront’s North End, home to luxurious beach “bungalows” tucked just behind the dunes.
Atlantic Avenue gets progressively more commercial as you head south along the strand, and when you pass the stately Cavalier Hotel you enter the tourist zone, where hotels in a steady line tower over fine sandy beaches.
Arriving by air has its own rewards. On a clear day—and this area tends to be clear and sunny even in the midst of winter’s grip—you’ll likely bank over the Navy piers as you fly into Norfolk International. The array of aircraft carriers, destroyers, frigates, and amphibious assault ships that stretch out below give testimony to the might of the Atlantic Fleet that calls this world’s largest Navy base home. Some of those piers will always be empty, their ships off protecting the peace in far-away lands.
You can’t overstate the importance of the military to Hampton Roads. Nearly half of the local economy is based on Department of Defense money. In 2009, that amounted to $18.9 billion the services spent right here.
The annual flood of federal funds, which nearly doubled over the last decade, helps cushion the area during recessions. The constant relocation of personnel keeps housing markets moving. The influx of dependents provides a steady stream of potential employees as well as new customers to area merchants.
The services are so ingrained that it often takes a major conflict, with mass deployments, to really get a sense of their daily impact. Suddenly, clogged roads are empty, and malls seem abandoned. There’s an eerie emptiness in the quiet when the background roar of practicing jets vanishes with the squadrons. And the rows of empty piers along the waterfront give silent testimony to conflicts half a world away.
There are nine major military bases in Hampton Roads proper, and another pair just up the road in Yorktown, for a total of more than 101,000 men and women in uniform stationed here.
Overview
One third of the Navy’s entire fleet and a quarter of its planes and people are home-ported in Hampton Roads. Naval Station Norfolk is the world’s largest Navy base, with 68 ships, 16 aircraft squadrons. and 386 tenant commands. Some 54,000 sailors serve there, making it second only to Fort Hood’s 65,000 soldiers in U.S. military base population. But where Fort Hood is a city virtually unto itself in the middle of Texas, Naval Station Norfolk is just the biggest of Hampton Roads’ many military facilities.
Little Creek Amphibious Base is home to 18 ships and some 12,000 sailors and Marines. Naval Air Station Oceana is the Navy’s East Coast Master Jet base, with nearly 8,000 sailors and 300 aircraft. Its annex at Dam Neck is home to another 4,000 sailors, including several SEAL teams and training schools.
That’s just the Navy. The Army has some 5,000 personnel up at Fort Eustis in Newport News, another 800 wrapping up business at historic Fort Monroe, and nearly 2,000 at Fort Story. The Air Force has almost 13,000 in uniform at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, and the Coast Guard has another 1,700 personnel in the region.
Each facility also has a cadre of civilians who make the base function or provide support services. That’s another 31,000 Hampton Roads residents drawing paychecks from the Department of Defense.
Add to that the nation’s largest government shipyard, and an assortment of private shipyards, from the massive Northrop Grumman Newport News Shipbuilding, the state’s largest private workplace, to smaller specialty yards—all relying either entirely or to a great degree on Navy work—and you get a sense of what Uncle Sam means to Hampton Roads.
Security has become much tighter on all area bases since the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept 11, 2001. (Fighters from Langley and ships from Norfolk were dispatched immediately that morning to ensure there were no additional acts of terrorism.) As a result, it’s not usually possible to wander onto area bases. But there are official tours and a few places locals know to scope out the action.
Here’s a look at the major installations.