New England

Algonquian-speaking peoples — the Wampanoag, Massachusett, Narragansett, Pequot, Mohegan, Abenaki, Penobscot and Passamaquoddy among them — farmed, fished and hunted here for thousands of years. Epidemics brought by European traders killed a large share of the coastal population shortly before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth in 1620. Puritans founded Boston in 1630 as the centre of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Roger Williams founded Providence in 1636 as a refuge for religious dissenters, and Connecticut grew along its river valley. Wars with Native nations, above all the Pequot War of 1636–38 and King Philip's War of 1675–78, broke Indigenous power in southern New England.

Boston led resistance to British rule: the Boston Massacre of 1770, the Boston Tea Party of 1773 and the first shots of the Revolutionary War at Lexington and Concord in April 1775. Vermont was briefly an independent republic before joining the Union in 1791, and Maine split from Massachusetts in 1820.

In the 19th century New England became the cradle of American industry, with water-powered textile mills at Pawtucket, Lowell and Manchester, while whaling made New Bedford and Nantucket rich. Boston was a centre of the abolitionist movement, and Irish, French-Canadian, Italian and Portuguese immigrants filled the mill towns. When the mills moved south in the 20th century, the region reinvented itself around universities, hospitals, finance, insurance and technology.

New Englanders have a reputation for reserve, thrift and dry humour, and for a strong attachment to local self-government: many towns in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine still decide budgets at an annual town meeting. New Hampshire guards its first-in-the-nation presidential primary. The Boston accent, which drops the "r" after vowels, and the all-purpose intensifier "wicked" are regional markers, though they are fading among younger people.

The white Congregational church on the town green is the classic image, but waves of Irish, Italian, French-Canadian and Portuguese immigration made the region heavily Catholic, and Cape Verdean and Portuguese communities remain strong in New Bedford and Fall River. Harvard, Yale, Brown and Dartmouth give the region an outsized academic culture, and its literary tradition runs from Emerson and Thoreau in Concord to Emily Dickinson in Amherst and Mark Twain in Hartford.

Sport is close to a civic religion in Boston, where the Red Sox rivalry with the New York Yankees is widely considered the fiercest in American sport. The Boston Marathon is run on Patriots' Day in April, and the Head of the Charles rowing regatta fills the river each October. Autumn "leaf peeping", maple sugaring in early spring and country fairs mark the rural calendar.

About 15 million people live in New England, most of them in southern New England's urban belt. Boston has about 670,000 residents at the centre of a metropolitan area of nearly five million; Worcester, Providence, Springfield, Hartford and New Haven are the other large cities, while the largest city in northern New England, Portland, Maine, has under 70,000 people and Burlington, Vermont, about 45,000.

The economy leans on knowledge work: universities, teaching hospitals and biotechnology clustered in Cambridge, financial firms in Boston, insurance in Hartford, and defence industries in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Further north the picture changes to tourism, forestry, dairy farming, maple syrup — Vermont is the largest producer in the country — and Maine's lobster fishery.

Commuting into Boston by car or train, a coffee from Dunkin' (founded in Quincy, Massachusetts), and winters of snow shovelling shape the routine. Housing costs are the pressing issue across southern New England, while northern New England faces an ageing population and a shortage of workers in its small towns.

The coast defines the menu. New England clam chowder is a creamy soup of clams, potatoes and salt pork; the lobster roll is lobster meat in a toasted bun, served cold with mayonnaise in Maine and warm with butter in Connecticut; and the clambake steams lobster, clams, corn and potatoes together. Fried clams from roadside clam shacks, stuffed quahogs (large hard-shell clams) called stuffies in Rhode Island, and cod and haddock complete the seafood.

Boston's old nickname "Beantown" comes from baked beans slow-cooked with molasses, and the city also gave its name to Boston cream pie, a sponge cake filled with custard and topped with chocolate. Massachusetts cranberry bogs supply Thanksgiving tables, Maine grows wild blueberries and makes whoopie pies, sandwich-like cakes filled with cream, and New Haven is known for its thin, charred pizza, locally called apizza.

Vermont contributes maple syrup, sharp cheddar and a pioneering craft-beer scene, and autumn orchards across the region sell apple cider and cider doughnuts. Rhode Island's official state drink is coffee milk, milk sweetened with coffee syrup.

Boston packs its history into a walkable centre: the Freedom Trail from Boston Common past Faneuil Hall and the Old North Church to the USS Constitution, the brick streets of Beacon Hill, Fenway Park, the Museum of Fine Arts and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, with Harvard across the river in Cambridge. Short trips lead to Lexington and Concord, Walden Pond, Salem and Plymouth.

South-east of the city, Cape Cod curls into the Atlantic, with the Cape Cod National Seashore's dunes, Chatham and Provincetown at its tip, and the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket offshore. In Rhode Island, Newport's Gilded Age mansions such as The Breakers line the Cliff Walk, and Providence has a well-kept colonial hill. Connecticut offers Mystic Seaport, Yale in New Haven and the Mark Twain House in Hartford, while the Berkshires in western Massachusetts hold summer music at Tanglewood.

Northern New England is the outdoor half. Vermont's Green Mountains run from Stowe, below Mount Mansfield, to the village of Woodstock, with Burlington on Lake Champlain. New Hampshire's White Mountains rise to Mount Washington, reached by road or cog railway, with Franconia Notch and the Kancamagus Highway famous in autumn. Along the Maine coast, Portland Head Light, Kennebunkport and Camden lead to Acadia National Park, where Cadillac Mountain and the carriage roads overlook Bar Harbor; inland, Baxter State Park's Mount Katahdin marks the northern end of the Appalachian Trail.