This history of Newport News is about a new city in a new century—the twentieth century—with attention to the importance to the first years after incorporation to the nascent years of the twenty-first century.
There is little argument that the twentieth century was "America's century," a time of incredible growth, innovation and prosperity across the country, despite depression and war, and the dichotomy of black and white, poverty and wealth that marked the highs and lows of Newport News' twentieth century experience.
The consistent threads that weave the Newport News story still hinge on the imagination, ambition and achievement of Collis Huntington; what he started at the end of the nineteenth century became a powerhouse in the twentieth.