1 January, 2026

It's not just a new day, in a new year; it's also a new season!

Fun Fact: The very first webcam at Virginia Beach was sponsored by and installed/operated on the behalf of the Bank of Tidewater (BOT).

Wayback Machine

BOT-Cams history: The very first Virginia Beach Oceanfront "Webcam" was known as the BOT Beach-Cam, and was placed in service in July 1997. The "BOT" referred to Bank of Tidewater, and the initial webcam deployment consisted of 3 webcams across the Hampton Roads area. It required some out of the box thinking & a custom solution to capture the images & get them to the website, because in 1997 the idea of a webcam wasn't commonplace. The original BOT webcams were known as the Bay-Cam, Beach-Cam and Lock-Cam. In the history links that follow, please be mindful that in 1997 the prevaling screen resolution was 640x480 (VGA) with an ongoing transition to 800x600 (SVGA). If you were on a high-end or professional system, you might have had a 1024x768 (XGA) monitor but those were still a few years off from becoming mainstream. Additionally, the average speed of your internet connection was dialup at 33.6kbps (56k if you were on the cutting edge)!

The BayCam and BeachCam continued forward and were subsuquently upgraded. When LockCam was upgraded it was relocated to Rudee Inlet and rebranded as InletCam. In late 2000, a new live streaming camera was brought online and was designated as LiveCam. LiveCam was another 1st for the area by bringing live internet streaming to the Virginia Beach Oceanfront over 25 years ago!

The BayCam was located at the Duck Inn on Shore drive (on their gazebo) and the BeachCam was located at the Breakers Resort Inn. LockCam was located at the Great Bridge Locks in Chesapeake, and InletCam was located at Rudee's Restaurant at Rudee Inlet. The LiveCam was located on the roof of the Quality Inn & Suites Oceanfront. The webcams were online 24x7 and ran until March of 2002 when Bank of Tidewater was aquired by SouthTrust Bank. SouthTrust did not have the level of community interest and focus that Bank of Tidewater did, so the webcam sponsorships were terminated.

Partially out of a sense of nastoliga, this is providing you with snapshots of the Virginia Beach Oceanfront and other select locations sourced from images that are publically accessable on the internet. The original scripts and code that was used to present images to the Bank of Tidewater website 25 years ago have been updated, and are behind the images you see here (although the webcam tech has improved significantly)! Some things are trully timeless.

We hope you enjoy!