Much of the American heritage is embodied in Massachusetts. The windswept seacoast of this small northeastern state may have been the first part of what is now the United States seen by Europeans. Norse explorers probably landed on Cape Cod more than 1,000 years ago. The Mayflower colonists who reached Plymouth in December 1620 sounded (in the words of Governor William Bradford) ye harbor and found it fitt for shipping; and marched into ye land, & found diverse cornfields, & little running brooks, a place fitt for situation. These Pilgrim leaders were refugees from religious persecution that had already driven them to another alien land. The English-speaking colony they founded became the New World's hub of liberty and culture, its cradle of commerce and industry.
When the state was the literary and intellectual center of the nation, its roster of writers and philosophers included such names as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Robert Frost, Louisa May Alcott, William Cullen Bryant, Emily Dickinson, Henry and William James, Amy and James Russell Lowell, Herman Melville, and Phillis Wheatley, the first African American woman poet. Nearly all of the top 19th-century historians had roots in the Bay State.
During the 19th century Massachusetts declined in importance as a center of international commerce, largely due to its early difficulty in developing communications with the markets of interior America. The economy thrived, however, after the first textile mills opened in Lowell, making Massachusetts the base for the Industrial Revolution in North America. As a consequence of factory-based enterprise, the state became largely urbanized and the lowly paid immigrant population increased. Today most of the early industries, such as textile weaving and shoemaking, have relocated near their sources of raw materials and their major markets. Aided by federal funding for research and development, the diverse economy of today's state is founded upon the high-technology and communications industries. Boston has long been considered the world's medical center.
The name Massachusetts comes from Algonquian Indian words that mean near the great mountain--an apparent reference to the tallest of the Blue Hills, a recreation area south of the town of Milton. It is nicknamed the Bay State, for the early settlement on Cape Cod Bay. Like other New Englanders, Bay Staters are popularly referred to as Yankees.
One of the New England states, Massachusetts is bordered on the north by New Hampshire and Vermont. New York lies to the west. On the south are Connecticut and Rhode Island. To the east is the Atlantic Ocean. Cape Cod, a peninsula in Massachusetts, thrusts into the Atlantic like a giant arm bent at the elbow (see Cape Cod). North of this arm are Massachusetts Bay and its two smaller inlets, Boston Bay and Cape Cod Bay. South of the peninsula are Nantucket Sound and Buzzards Bay. Here also are the offshore islands--the Elizabeth Islands, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket Island. From west to east the mainland of Massachusetts extends 145 miles (233 kilometers). The peninsula of Cape Cod measures 65 miles (105 kilometers) to its curved tip. The width, north to south, of the western part of the state is 47 miles (76 kilometers). At its eastern end the width is 100 miles (161 kilometers). Massachusetts is 8,257 square miles (21,386 square kilometers) in area, including 431 square miles (1,116 square kilometers) of inland water surface.
