A Thirteen Colonies heir draws the most U.S. tourists
New York State, in the Northeastern United States, touches New England, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Canada, the Atlantic, and the Great Lakes. Fourth-most populous among the states with over 20 million residents, its Downstate holds New York City, the nation’s largest city, and Long Island, America’s most populous island with about forty percent of state residents.
The state covers 141,300 square kilometres, 27th by area. Downstate, including the lower Hudson Valley, accounts for roughly two-thirds of residents, while Upstate stretches from the Great Lakes to Lake Champlain across the Adirondacks and Catskills. The Mohawk Valley runs east to meet the Hudson near Albany, the capital, and Buffalo and Rochester anchor the west. In 2022 it drew more visitors than any other state, and in 2013 Niagara Falls, Grand Central, Central Park and Times Square ranked among the world’s ten most-visited sights.
Lenape people controlled the harbour area and shared Long Island with the Wampanoag, with Mohicans to the north and the Mohawk and other Haudenosaunee nations farther west. The Beaver Wars of about 1640 to 1680 reshaped the whole region as the Haudenosaunee fought for trapping grounds from Michigan to Virginia. The Tuscarora joined as a sixth nation around 1720, and the confederacy still includes the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida and Mohawk.
Giovanni da Verrazzano sailed through the Narrows on 17 April 1524, and Henry Hudson entered Upper New York Bay on 11 September 1609 for the Dutch East India Company. Fort Nassau near Albany, built in 1614, was the first Dutch post in North America; Fort Orange followed in 1624 and Fort Amsterdam, the seed of New York City, in 1625. England seized New Netherland in 1664 and renamed it the Province of New York.
The Albany Congress of 1754 was an early debate on colonial unity, and Fort Ticonderoga and Fort William Henry saw fighting in the Seven Years’ War. Delegates protesting the Stamp Act gathered in Manhattan on 19 October 1765, and cannon captured at Ticonderoga helped force the British out of Boston. New York ratified the Constitution in 1788, and the Erie Canal later opened its interior.
Source: New York (state)
