ceased to be the "tobacco country" of previous years.

The production of tobacco continued to increase in the Piedmont and
decrease in Tidewater, and Piedmont Virginia became more firmly
established as Virginia's tobacco belt. This change was due partly to
the fact that the virgin and fertile soils of the West kept tobacco
prices so low that it could not be profitably produced on the manured
worn out soils in the East. Tidewater was becoming full of old tobacco
fields covered with young pine trees and the industry became
concentrated largely in middle and southern Virginia. By 1800 Piedmont
Virginia had definitely become the major tobacco producing area.

[Illustration: Old Tobacco Warehouse, built 1680 at Urbanna, Virginia
Courtesy of Mrs. H. I. Worthington]

[Illustration: The mild species of tobacco which Rolfe imported from
the West Indies.

The harsh species of tobacco which Rolfe found the
Indians cultivating.

Courtesy of George Arents, and Virginia State Library]

Expansion and new developments over a period of years brought about a
fantastic increase in tobacco production. When its production was
confined to the Tidewater area, Virginia produced about 40,000,000
pounds annually; by 1800 this amount had doubled. Virginia remained the
leading producer of tobacco in the United States until the War Between
the States, when she was replaced by Kentucky, owing to the devastating
effects of the war in the Old Dominion.

In the South the nature of the crop usually determines the number of
acres that one person can cultivate successfully. Only a small number
of acres of tobacco can be cultivated properly owing to its high value
of yield per acre and the careful supervision required. The production
of tobacco per acre does not appear to have changed very much in the
long period from about 1650 to 1800, when 1,000 pounds per acre was
considered a good yield. However, the amount that one man could produce
increased during this period as the planters became more experienced
and the plow and other implements came to be used more extensively. It
has been estimated that in 1624 one man could properly cultivate and
harvest only about one-half of an acre of tobacco, or about 400 pounds.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century the average product of one
man was from 1,500 to 2,000 pounds or in terms of acreage, from one and
a half to two acres, plus six or sev