bill? >> caller: yeah, dr. kelso, this is bill hughes and i wanted to thank you for what you did. i was stationed at ft. houston back in 1966. and i spent many weekends trying to find jamestown. and i was totally amazed that it wasn't -- couldn't find it. that's one. two, i did find in the church in williamsburg, i did find george washington's grandmother. i was doing some rubbings on the old -- so, i don't know if it's true or not, but i was always, you know, i have a picture of that gravestone. i was really enthusiastic. but i want to thank you. you really filled a big void in my life. >> well, i'm glad we could find jamestown finally, that's good. >> bill kelso's book "jamestown the buried truth" if you want some further details -- if you can't get to the site or you've been there and you want more information, the book "jamestown, the buried truth." next up is bridgeport, ohio. hello, lou, go ahead. turn down your set there and go ahead with your question or comment for bill kelso or bly straube. i'm going to put you on hold, lou. bill kelso, we just showed your book, "the bur

might have more to say on that. >> we are going to spend the next half hour with bly straub and bill kelso. >> we are taking your questios.s here's warrenson, virginia, charlie, go ahead. >> caller: thanks so much for taking my call. i'm a public high school history teacher in northern virginia. i want to thank bill and bly for digging for the

bill kelso, let me ask you a basic question about why you chose that spot in 1993 to start digging. why that spot on the james river? >> that's a fairly complex question. there were indications in historical records that one in particular said that the church of the early 17th century was in the middle of the fort, and the one above-ground survivor from jamestown that we have is a brick church tower. so, i thought maybe in that vicinity there could be some remains of the fort. we also had looked at some artifacts that had turned up inadvertently through utility trenches and things like that that seemed old enough, military things. and it was an area that just was not yet explored enough to say that this was where the fort was and conventional wisdom was that the fort had washed away on the western end of the island. we're not quite on the western end. but as it turned out, the fort did not only not wash away, it's basically all here. >> we have callers waiting for questions and comments for both of you. let's go to jonathan in san diego. go ahead, jonathan. >> caller: good morning,

and at that time point bill kelso and another colleague nick lichetti got involved and looked at the field records to see maybe if something had been overlooked, you know, some feature that looked like a palisade wall or a ditch. and sure enough, they kind of saw some things that looked like right-angled features, you know, that looked like they could be part of pali palisades defense . and we presented preservation virginia a plan, that bill worked up, a whole master plan of how we were going to do this. it was supposed to be a ten-year project and here we are going on, 18, i think, because we found the fort, oh, wow! the biggest discovery of our lifetime. we're so close to it that sometimes we forget how significant this is, and probably long after we're dead and gone, people are going to finally get excited about this because it is, you know, in our backyard, and it's not, you know, the sands of egypt or something but it's just as important or as significant as egyptology, you know, work that's going over there. and this was maybe even more important because the documents are so s

. >>> i'm bill kelso, i'm the director of the jamestown rediscovery project, archeological project. it's been going on for 18 years. and what i'm going to do is to give you sort of lecturettes at different places about the property, and talk about a little bit about the history of jamestown, a little bit about geography, and a little bit about the history of the project. and then we'll go to each of the sites that are open right now, the trenches, you were promised this is in the trenches, so we're going to get in the trench, at least one of them, and you are on one of the few islands you can be on in the james river. that's one of the reasons it was chosen as the first colony. we're about 35 miles from hampton roads, or the opening to the ocean. the river goes forever into the mountains of virginia and gets different names and different branches. but at richmond, there are water falls. and it's not navigable from here to there. and that was important, because the colonists found that out. they didn't quite know it in the beginning. that gives us a setting. jamestown. the whole idea