Virginia

Virginia calls itself the Old Dominion and has earned a second title, Mother of Presidents: eight presidents were born here, Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe among them. The colony began in 1607 at Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the New World, and Virginia ratified the Constitution on June 25, 1788, as the tenth state.

The house at the center of this poster is Monticello, Jefferson's home near Charlottesville, set on the top of an 850-foot hill whose name means "little mountain" in Italian. He began building in 1768 and was still remodeling it during his presidency, with the octagonal dome room as its best-known feature. Monticello has appeared on the back of the nickel since 1938, with two exceptions, and it is a World Heritage Site, listed in 1987 together with the University of Virginia, which Jefferson also designed.

In the picture, the red-brick house with its white columns and low dome sits on a green knoll in autumn. A road winds off through orange and rust hillsides, and ranks of blue ridges stack up behind, each paler than the last. VIRGINIA runs across the base in gold on navy.