The Magazine (Williamsburg, Virginia)

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One of the few orginial brick buildings remaining from the colonial period.

The Magazine served as the central Royal depository for arms and gunpowder for the Virginia colony.

The spark that ignited the Revolution in Virginia was struck where the colony stored its gunpowder, the Magazine in the middle of Williamsburg.

The night of April 20, 1775, Lieutenant Henry Collins stole toward the capital with a squad of royal marines from H.M.S. Magdalen anchored in Burwell's Bay on the James River. Their orders, straight from Governor Dunmore, were to empty the arsenal and disable the muskets stored there.

"Tho' it was intended to have been done privately," Dunmore wrote a few days later, "Mr. Collins and his party were observed, and notice was immediately given to the Inhabitants of this Place: Drums were then sent through the City." It was early the morning of April 21 by then. The marines fled in the dark with 15 half-barrels of powder for H.M.S. Fowey anchored in the York River.

Patriot outcry at the Governor's actions directly led to the raising of a militia against Dunmore, and when news of the fighting at Lexington and Concord reached Virginia, Dunmore was forced to flee for the safety of the HMS Fowey in the James.

It was never safe enough for him to return to land.
Royal rule in Virginia was over.