The three Mid-Atlantic states - NEW YORK, PENNSYLVANIA
and NEW JERSEY - stand at the heart of the most populated
and industrialized corner of the US. Although dominated in the
popular imagination by the gray smokestacks of New Jersey and the
coalfields and steel factories of Pennsylvania, these states also
encompass lakes, forests, farmland, rolling green countryside and,
in places, expanses of virtual wilderness.
European settlement was characterized by considerable shifts and
turns: the Dutch , who arrived in the 1620s, were
methodically squeezed out by the English , who in turn
fought off the French challenge to secure control of the
region by the mid-eighteenth century. The Native American
population, including the Iroquois Confederacy and Lenni
Lenape Indian, had sided with the French against the English, and
were soon confined to reservations or pushed north into Canada. At
first the economy depended on the fur trade, though by the 1730s
English Quakers , along with Amish and
Mennonites from Germany and a few Presbyterian Irish
, had made farming a significant force, their holdings extending to
the western limits of Pennsylvania and New York.
All three states were important during the Revolution :
over half the battles were fought here, including major American
victories at Trenton and Princeton in New Jersey.
Upstate New York was geographically crucial, as the British forces
knew that control of the Hudson River would effectively divide New
England from the other colonies, and the long winter spent by the
rag-tag Continental Army at Valley Forge outside
Philadelphia turned it into a well-organized force. After the
Revolution, industry became the region's prime economic force, with
mill towns springing up along the numerous rivers. By the
mid-1850s the large coalfields of northeast Pennsylvania
were powering the smoky steel mills of Pittsburgh, and the
discovery of high-grade crude oil in 1859 marked the
beginning of the automobile age. Though still significant,
especially in the regions near New York City, heavy industry has
now by and large been replaced by tourism as the economic
engine.
Although many travelers to the east coast may not consider
venturing much further than New York City itself, the region is
much more than just an overspill of the Big Apple. Each region has
a distinct identity. Just thirty minutes outside of Manhattan,
Long Island offers both the crashing surf of the Atlantic
Ocean and the cool calm of the Long Island Sound. Upstate New
York is for outdoors enthusiasts: the wooded Catskill
Mountains line the Hudson River (which Henry James claimed was
"in the geography of the ideal"), the imposing Adirondack
Mountains spread over a quarter of the state, and the Finger
Lakes region offers a pastoral alternative to the industrial
Erie Canal cities along I-90. In the northwest corner of the state,
on the Canadian border, are the awesome Niagara Falls.
Pennsylvania is best known for the fertile Pennsylvania
Dutch country and the two great cities of Philadelphia
and Pittsburgh. New Jersey , often pictured as one big
industrial carbuncle, offers shameless tourist pleasures along the
shore: day-trippers in their millions oflock each year to the
Boardwalk and casinos of Atlantic City .
The entire region is well covered by public
transportation , with New York's JFK and New Jersey's Newark
airports acting as major international gateways, and New York's La
Guardia Airport serving domestic flights. In Pennsylvania, both
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have reasonably busy airports with a
growing number of international flights. Amtrak trains run
routes up and down the Northeast Corridor through New York, New
Jersey and Pennsylvania, while the New Jersey Transit rail and bus
network serves all of New Jersey, extending from Atlantic City west
to Philadelphia and north to Manhattan. Greyhound buses
follow the major interstates, with a few subsidiary lines running
to more out-of-the-way places.