- During its 350-year history, the County of York has figured prominently in both the political and economic history of the Virginia Peninsula, the Commonwealth, and the Nation. The port of Yorktown, which remains the seat of government, was the site of the final battle of the American Revolution where on October 19, 1781, Lord Cornwallis surrendered his British Army to the combined American-French forces under Washington and Rochambeau. Yorktown also figured prominently in the Civil War, serving as a major port to supply both northern and southern towns, depending on who held Yorktown at the time.
- After World War II, one of the nation's largest and most diversified military-industrial complexes emerged in the Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News MSA, spawning numerous small precision machine, metal fabrication and technical research companies. The influence of the early waterman remains active; seafood processing, ship building, and ship repair prosper.
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