Download US Geography ---Northeast The Northeastern United States

US Geography ---Northeast
The Northeastern United States (sometimes called simply the Northeast) is a region of the United States.
According to the definition used by the United States Census Bureau, the Northeast region consists of nine
states: the New England states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and
Connecticut; and the Mid-Atlantic states of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Major cities in this
area include New York City, Newark, Philadelphia, Boston, Pittsburgh, Jersey City and Buffalo.
The Northeast, as defined by the Census Bureau, is the wealthiest region of the United States; New Jersey
and Connecticut have the highest median incomes in the country after Maryland, while Massachusetts is
ranked fifth. Pennsylvania also ranks high in per capita income, with Chester County coming in on the list
of wealthiest counties. It also accounts for approximately 25% of U.S. gross domestic product as of 2007.
All eight Ivy League schools are located in the Northeast. New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and
Massachusetts rank in the top 15 states in terms of population.
The Northeast region is the smallest in area of the four Census Bureau-defined regions of the US. The
region's landscape varies from the rocky coast of New England to the fertile farmland of the Ohio River
Valley behind the Allegheny Front in Pennsylvania. Beginning at West Quoddy Head Peninsula in Maine,
the easternmost point in the United States, the Atlantic coastline is largely rocky, with jagged cliffs rising
up to a hundred feet above the ocean. South of the Isles of Shoals near the Maine/New Hampshire border,
the coastline begins to subside to sandy beaches which extend through the rest of the Northeast's Atlantic
coastline.
Four major rivers pierce the coastline to empty into the Atlantic: the Delaware at the New Jersey/Delaware
border, the Hudson at the New York/New Jersey border, the Connecticut in Connecticut, and the Kennebec
in Maine. A fifth river, the Susquehanna, is the longest river on the east coast of the United States and
flows through New York and Pennsylvania but reaches tidewater in the South Atlantic region of the
country. Two of the Great Lakes, Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, form part of the northern border of the
region.
The Kennebec River extends 150 miles (240 km) through Maine past Augusta to the Atlantic.
The Connecticut River flows south, running along the border of New Hampshire and Vermont between the
Green Mountains and White Mountains, before flowing through Springfield, Massachusetts, and Hartford,
Connecticut, on its way to empty into Long Island Sound. In the White Mountains of New Hampshire is
Mount Washington, the highest mountain in the Northeast and the location of the highest recorded wind
speed in the world. To the west of the Green Mountains on the New York/Vermont border, and extending
into Canada, is the glacier-formed Lake Champlain, where Vermont's largest city Burlington is located. The
Lake Champlain area drains north into the St. Lawrence river valley.
The Hudson rises in the Adirondack Mountains in Upstate New York, passes between the Berkshires and
the Catskill Mountains, then empties into New York Harbor in the New York metropolitan area. The
Mohawk River flows eastward from its source near Utica, New York between the Catskills and the
Adirondacks before merging with the Hudson north of Albany.
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The Delaware River flows from its source between the Pocono Mountains and the Catskills, forming the
border between Pennsylvania and New York/New Jersey, and passing the Lehigh Valley, Trenton, and
Philadelphia areas before emptying into Delaware Bay on the Delaware/New Jersey border.
The Susquehanna River begins in Cooperstown, New York and winds down a valley between the
Allegheny Plateau and the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania before crossing the border into Maryland
and emptying into the Chesapeake Bay, reaching the Atlantic at Norfolk, Virginia.
To the north and west of the Susquehanna are the Finger Lakes of New York, so called because they
resemble human fingers, and the Northeast's borders with the Great Lakes of Lake Ontario in New York
and Lake Erie in Pennsylvania and New York. On an isthmus between the two Great Lakes on the New
York/Ontario border near Buffalo is Niagara Falls. The St. Lawrence River flows northeast out of Lake
Ontario alongside northern New York and then through Canada to the Atlantic Ocean.
Flowing out of the Allegheny Plateau to the southwest is the Ohio River, formed by the confluence of the
Allegheny and Monongahela rivers at Pittsburgh. The Ohio flows west and becomes the border between
Upper South states such as Kentucky and Midwestern states such as Ohio, then merges with the Mississippi
River.
Despite being geographically one of the smallest regions of the United States, the northeastern states
possess a wide range of climates. Rainfall varies from over 50 inches (1.3 m) annually in some coastal
areas, to 32 inches (810 mm) in the western part of Pennsylvania and New York. Snowfall can range from
over 100 inches (2.5 m) per year in Upstate New York to only a foot or so in the coastal areas of southern
New Jersey.
Generally, northern New England, the parts of New York north of the Mohawk River, highland areas in the
Appalachians and some coastal areas possess a warm summer humid continental climate (Koppen climate
classification Dfb), with warm, humid summers and snowy, often bitterly cold winters. Cities in this zone
include Syracuse, New York; Burlington, Vermont; and Portland, Maine. Portland's winters are softened
because it is on the coast.
Below this line, much of the region (except for the higher elevations) has a hot summer humid continental
climate (Koppen Dfa), with hot, humid summers and cold, snowy winters. Much of New England and the
northern part of the Mid-Atlantic States have this climate. Boston, Hartford and Pittsburgh have this
climate. Portions of extreme southern New York State including New York City; northeast, central, and
southern New Jersey; extreme southeastern Pennsylvania including Philadelphia; and southwestern
Connecticut have a humid subtropical climate (Koppen Cfa), with hot, humid summers and more mild
winters.
History
New England is perhaps the best-defined region of the U.S., with more uniformity and more of a shared
heritage than other regions of the country. New England has played a dominant role in American history.
From the late 17th century to the mid to late 18th century, New England was the nation's cultural leader in
political, educational, cultural and intellectual thought. During this time, it was the country's economic
center.
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The earliest European settlers of New England were English Protestants who came in search of religious
liberty. They gave the region its distinctive political format — town meetings (an outgrowth of meetings
held by church elders), in which citizens gathered to discuss issues of the day. Town meetings still function
in many New England communities today and have been revived as a form of dialogue in the national
political arena.
The cluster of top-ranking universities and colleges in New England—including four of the eight schools of
the Ivy League - Harvard, Yale, Brown and Dartmouth; as well as MIT, NESCAC schools, Boston College,
Boston University, Northeastern University, Brandeis University, Tufts University, and numerous other
colleges and universities—is unequaled by any other region. Many of the graduates from these schools end
up settling in the region after school, providing the area with a well-educated populace and its most
valuable resource, as the area is relatively lacking in natural resources other than "ice, rocks, and fish".
Soon after many descendants of original New England settlers migrated westward in search of land, new
waves of immigrants from Canada, Ireland, Italy, and eastern Europe moved into the region to take
industrial jobs. Many of their descendants became educated and joined the middle classes. Despite a
changing population, New England has maintained a distinct cultural identity. As a whole, the area of New
England has tended to be liberal in its politics. It is has been strongly supportive of education and
community-building.[citation needed]
Certain architecture and sights have come to stand as New England icons: the simple woodframe houses
and white church steeples that are features of many small towns, and lighthouses that dot the Atlantic coast.
New England is well known for its mercurial weather, its crisp chill, and vibrantly colored foliage in
autumn. In colonial times, the colder weather killed off germs and gave the region a healthier environment
than that of the Chesapeake Bay Colony, where settlers suffered from summer illnesses and mortality was
much higher.
Colonial to 1960s
The Northeast was a Federalist, Whig and Republican from 1800 to the late 19th century.[20]
During the early 19th century, the Republicans appealed to the Northeast by advocating public education,
freedom of movement, entrepreneurial solutions, and open markets. They tried to encourage
industrialization and endorsed the concept that laborers have the right to sell their labor in exchange for
wages. In part because the North developed a different labor market, its residents were able to abolish
slavery locally with little economic impact, although its wealth had been built on trading, shipping and
manufacturing linked directly to the slave economy.
Abolitionists became active in the Northeast. Republicans generally opposed labor unions and slavery.
Greater New England voted Republican in Presidential elections from 1856 until the 1960s. The 60s
marked major cultural and political realignments across the nation. The Republican regional identification
was even stronger at the Congressional level.[
From the American Civil War until the Great Depression, Northeastern and Midwestern Republicans and
allied business interests tended to dominate American politics. The wealth and power of the Northeast
during this period generated animosity in regions of the country with more agrarian interests, in part
because of Republican domination.
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Most immigrants and working class residents of major cities were organized by, and therefore more likely
to support the rival Democratic Party. Then often became linked to powerful political machines that dished
out patronage. The Tammany Hall machine in New York City continued its dominance into the 1960s.
Immigration to Northeastern cities rapidly pushed the population of the region upwards from the 1790s
until World War II. However, it was not until the 1920s and 1930s that ethnic voters became more
important to the Democratic Party in the north. The Democratic Party often won the support of immigrants
through aid and political patronage.
In the 20th century, there were major demographic changes from two waves of the Great Migration of
African Americans, from 1910-1970 overall. In multiple acts of passive resistance, African Americans fled
the lynchings, segregation and disfranchisement of the South to move to northern and midwestern cities for
new industrial jobs and better opportunities for education. During this period, half the African-American
population went from being rural to becoming urbanized. They joined and greatly expanded black
populations that had increased after the Civil War in cities like New York and Boston, and also migrated to
such cities as Philadelphia, Buffalo, Rochester, Albany, Hartford, New Haven and Pittsburgh. In the 1920s
New York's Harlem became a center of black intellectual and artistic life for the nation. A total of seven
million blacks migrated to the North, Midwest, and West, especially to California. From the administration
of FDR during the Great Depression on, many African Americans became Democrats.
The humid east receives abundant precipitation throughout the year. Winters in the northern part are very
cold with much snowfall. In the southern part, rainfall is plentiful; summers are very hot but winters are
mild. Because of its bountiful moisture, the humid east has also traditionally been a very important
agricultural area. Once a land of vast forests, early settlers cleared the land as they moved westward. In
some areas, cleared lands were cultivated, abused, exhausted, and eroded away. In other areas, vast forests
have been replanted, as in the South, the Appalachians, and parts of the Midwest.
A climatic transition zone occurs on either side of the 100 degrees west longitude line. The eastern
woodlands gradually give way to tall grass prairies, which in turn give way to steppes, where short grasses
flourish. Few natural tall grass prairies exist today on the Plains. Over the past few centuries, farmers
cultivated and planted most of the region with corn or wheat.
The eastern part of the United States includes two climate types: Humid Continental and Subtropical.
Humid Continental is the largest climate type in the United States. It has two subtypes: those areas with hot
summers and those with warm summers. The Humid Continental climates are transitional climates between
the severe Subarctic climate region in Canada and the warmer Humid Subtropical region of the southern
and southeastern United States. These climates are battlegrounds between cold polar air masses surging
southward and tropical air moving northward. Humid Continental climates have four distinct seasons and
large variations in temperature. They are warm in summer and cold enough to sustain winter snow for some
months.
These climate zones were similar to the climates of Europe and allowed European settlers to continue
farming as they had in their homelands. They established family farms and concentrated on raising crops
and using some of the produce to feed the farm’s livestock. Eventually, this system of general crop and
livestock farming spread westward across the United States
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As North America’s longest river, the Mississippi River flows 3,770 km (2,340 mi) from its source at Lake
Itasca, Minnesota, to its mouth at the Gulf of Mexico. In addition to the Great Lakes system, the
Mississippi drainage complex is one of the two largest natural inland waterway systems on the continent.
The Mississippi River and its network of tributaries, which includes the Ohio, Missouri, Tennessee,
Arkansas, Red, and Illinois rivers, drains most of the central United States. In some areas, the main channel
of the Mississippi reaches a width of nearly 1.6 km (1 mi). The river has a channel ranging in depth from
more than 7 m (more than 25 ft) in New Orleans, Louisiana, to 2.7 m (9 ft) in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Deepwater vessels can navigate the river as far north as Baton Rouge, Louisiana, while smaller ships can
navigate the Mississippi for more than 2,900 km (1,800 mi).
As early settlers moved away from the Atlantic coast, they used the Mississippi River system to travel to
interior locations and to ship their agricultural products to markets. New Orleans, situated on the
Mississippi about 160 km (about 100 mi) north of the Gulf of Mexico, became an important shipping and
trade center. At first people and goods traveled on flatboats, which were powered by oars or poles. Then in
the early 1800s, engine-driven steamboats were introduced, offering improved transportation and shorter
travel times. Steamboats led to increased trade and travel on the Mississippi, and several urban settlements,
including St. Louis, Missouri, quickly grew to become major inland ports.
The Mississippi still serves as an important transportation route to and from America's Heartland,
especially for barges loaded with raw materials, crops, and other bulky goods. More than half of the freight
transported on inland waterways in the United States travels on the Mississippi. Dams built for flood
control and power generation lie along the entire course of the waterway, and locks provide a means for
vessels to bypass these structures.
Several large manufacturing, service, and transportation centers have developed along the Mississippi
River system because of the traffic along the waterway. These include Saint Louis, Missouri; Saint Paul,
Minnesota; and Memphis, Tennessee. New Orleans, Louisiana, has become the busiest port city in the
Southeast.
Coastlines of the united states
The Atlantic coastline stretches 3,330 km (2,069 mi), from the northern reaches of Maine to the southern
tip of Florida. While the New England region is characterized by hilly, rocky terrain, most of the remaining
eastern coastline lies on a broad coastal plain, dotted with many large bays and numerous rivers. Since the
outer reaches of the coastal plain are almost at sea level, it is not uncommon for extensive coastal marshes
to develop in areas where fresh water from rivers mixes with ocean salt water. Sandy barrier islands
parallel much of the Atlantic shoreline.
Early European colonists landed on the coast of the Atlantic. The first permanent English colony was
founded at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. Settlements quickly sprung up along the entire East Coast.
Located most commonly in the New England and Middle Atlantic states, port cities grew and became
increasingly more important. Colonists shipped crops and raw materials back to Europe, in exchange for
manufactured goods. Cities such as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia became distribution centers,
offering supplies to pioneers traveling westward by railroad, waterways, or trails. Immigration helped to
increase the population of coastal cities.
Today, numerous major urban centers can be found along the entire length of the Atlantic coastline. To the
south, the population of Miami, Florida, has swelled with the flow of immigrants from Latin America. In
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the north, the Megalopolis region is home to the largest concentration of people in the United States,
stretching from Maine to Virginia. Anchored by New York City, this area also includes Boston,
Massachusetts; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Baltimore, Maryland; and Washington, D.C.
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