All About Massachusetts
Massachusetts is a constituent state of the United States of America. It was one of the original 13 states and is one of the six New England states lying in the northeastern corner of the nation. Massachusetts is bounded on the north by Vermont and New Hampshire, on the east and southeast by the Atlantic Ocean, on the south by Rhode Island and Connecticut, and on the west by New York. It covers 8,284 square miles (21,456 square km) and ranks 45th among the states in area. The capital is Boston. The residents represent an amalgamation of the prototypical Yankee spirit of an earlier America and the energies of the later immigrants who flocked to its cities in the 19th century.
Like others of the British colonies along America's Atlantic seaboard in the 17th and 18th centuries, Massachusetts was founded by people seeking in a wilderness for a new way of life involving such then-untried notions as freedom of religion and self-government. These and other ideals were severely tested during more than 150 years of colonial life, but they came to provide much of the ideological underpinning of the American Revolution, from which Massachusetts emerged as one of the founding and leading members of the new United States.
Massachusetts has been, nearly from its founding, a leading force in American education. During the 19th century Boston became synonymous with the highest attainments in America's cultural and artistic life, and the state as a whole provided industrial and financial leadership for the nation. Though these latter positions have long since been yielded to larger and faster-growing states and regions, the history and people of Massachusetts have left an indelible mark on the development of the American consciousness.
The Massachusetts coastline is about 1,500 miles (2,400 km) in length, yet the cross-country distances are only 190 miles (300 km) from east to west and 110 miles (180 km) from north to south. The jagged coast winds from Rhode Island around Cape Cod, in and out of scenic harbours along the shore south of Boston, through Boston harbour and up the North Shore, swinging around the painters' paradise of Cape Ann, to New Hampshire. Off the southeastern coast lie the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, lashed by the gray Atlantic in winter but in summer alive with thousands of tourists and longtime seasonal residents.
The economy of Massachusetts today is based largely on technological research and development, service industries, and tourism. This represents a major shift from the state's preindustrial agricultural basis in the 17th and 18th centuries and the heavy manufacturing that characterized the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. Massachusetts usually ranks among the top three or four U.S. states in value of fish landings.
Historical sites in Boston draw many tourists. The Freedom Trail provides a trip that includes Boston Common, the old and new (1795) state houses, Park Street Church, the Old Granary Burying Ground, Old Corner Bookstore, Faneuil Hall, Paul Revere House, the Old North Church, and the USS Constitution, better known as Old Ironsides. Private clubs, both social and athletic, long have been Massachusetts institutions, especially for golf, tennis, and yachting. Among the most exclusive are the Brookline Country Club and the Longwood Cricket Club in Brookline, the Myopia Hunt Club in Hamilton, and various yacht clubs along the North Shore above Boston, particularly in Marblehead. Athletics have come to form a subculture among all social classes. The professional teams - Boston's Red Sox in baseball, Bruins in hockey, and Celtics in basketball and the Foxboro-based New England Patriots in football - attract the most attention, but the state also gives considerable emphasis to high school and college athletics.
Symbolic of Massachusetts's close relation to the sea, the first lighthouse in the United States, Boston Light, was built off that busy port in 1716. Water formed the Bay State's highway system for 200 years. Rivers such as the Connecticut and Merrimack and man-made canals such as the Middlesex served early needs well. The Boston Post Road and the Mohawk Trail were the most heavily traveled of the early roadways. Opened to Boston–New York mail in 1673, the Post Road consisted of three routes. The Mohawk, an Indian footpath that was converted to an ox road by the settlers, became the first interstate toll-free road, called Shunpike, in 1786. The first electric street railway was built in Brockton, and Boston had the nation's first passenger subway, as well as an elevated system. Boston's Logan International Airport, stretching parallel to the harbour, is one of the few large air terminals in close proximity to a major city.
