USA Mid Atlantic Region
Destination Guide & Hotel Reservations
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especially in the regions near New York City, heavy industry has now by and large been
replaced by tourism as the economic engine.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.
Reserve a Hotel Room in The US Mid Atlantic Region
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