Winding your way up Onancock Creek, it is easy to imagine you are being led back in time. As you wander up the hill into town, you pass beautifully restored homes with manicured yards on immaculate streets. As its present-day name suggests (and the archaeological record supports), Onancock (pronounced "oh-NANN-kock") was favored by American Indians long before Europeans discovered its bucolic serenity. Industrious settlers harvested a bounty of tobacco from the flat, easily cultivated land of the Eastern Shore, and Onancock Creek provided rare deep-water access for extracting it for shipment to England. In 1680 the Virginia Assembly legislated for a port to be built in every county in the Colony, and Onancock Creek was the natural choice of location to serve the regional area. Onancock is its own main attraction, a compact town of essentially two streets and an abundance of tastefully restored and maintained buildings.