Mid-Atlantic Travel Video Guide

Mid-Atlantic Travel Itinerary

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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 Though still significant, especially in the regions near New York City, heavy industry has now by and large been replaced by tourism as the economic engine.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.

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