Massachusetts

I

Introduction

Massachusetts, officially Commonwealth of Massachusetts, one of the New England states of the United States, bordered on the north by Vermont and New Hampshire; on the east by the Atlantic Ocean and several of its arms (such as the Gulf of Maine, Massachusetts Bay, Boston Bay, and Cape Cod Bay); on the south-east by the Atlantic Ocean and a number of its arms (such as Nantucket Sound and Buzzards Bay); on the south by Rhode Island and Connecticut; and on the west by New York.

Massachusetts entered the Union on February 6, 1788, as the sixth of the 13 original states. It soon became an important intellectual centre, known for Harvard University and the cultural institutions of Boston. In the 19th century, it developed into a major manufacturing state, noted for textiles and footwear; in the mid-20th century, electronic components and other high-technology items became leading manufactured products. Massachusetts is famous for its summer resorts, such as the sand beaches of Cape Cod. Presidents John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and John F. Kennedy were born in the state, and President Calvin Coolidge spent most of his life there. The name of the state is probably derived from an Algonquian village and may mean “place of big hills”. Massachusetts is known as the “Bay State”.

II

Land and Resources

Massachusetts has an area of 23,934 sq km (9,241 sq mi), 44th in size among the states. The state is roughly rectangular in shape, and its extreme dimensions are 295 km (183 mi) from east to west and 182 km (113 mi) from north to south. Elevations range from sea level, along the Atlantic Ocean, to 1,064 m (3,491 ft), from the top of Mount Greylock, in the north-west. The state has a coastline of 309 km (192 mi) and a tidal shoreline of 2,445 km (1,519 mi).

A

Physical Geography

Massachusetts can be divided into six major geographical regions: the Atlantic Coastal Plain, the Seaboard Lowland, the New England Upland, the Connecticut Valley Lowland, the Western New England Upland, and Berkshire Valley. The Atlantic Coastal Plain, in the east, encompasses Cape Cod and the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.

The Seaboard Lowland provides a transition to the hillier areas of the interior. In the Boston area are some beautiful elongated hills, called drumlins, which are features of a glacial origin. Perhaps the most famous of these drumlins is Bunker Hill.

The Seaboard Lowland grades almost imperceptibly into the New England Upland, a region that dominates most of New England and in Massachusetts is divided into two parts by the Connecticut Valley Lowland. Wachusett Mountain (611 m/2,006 ft) is a striking summit rising above the hilltops in central Massachusetts.

The state’s fourth major region, the Connecticut Valley Lowland, contains red sandstones and shales that have been worn down to a flat plain through millions of years of erosion. Alluvial deposits from the Connecticut River and clays from an ancient glacial lake help to provide a fertile agricultural region.

The regions of western Massachusetts are complex. The Western New England Upland, as it becomes rougher, grades into the Green Mountains, which are far more pronounced in the north. Here, as in southern Vermont, the region is more a deeply cut plateau than a linear mountain ridge.

Separating the Green Mountains section from the Taconic Mountains is the deep and narrow valley of the Hoosic and Housatonic rivers, the Berkshire Valley. Some patches of dairying remain in the wider southern part of the valley, but most of the area is non-agricultural. The Taconics, lower than in Vermont, contain the highest point in Massachusetts, Mount Greylock.

The Charles River is the longest river wholly within Massachusetts, but the Housatonic and the Connecticut rivers are more important. Disastrous floods have occurred on both, and many communities are protected by elaborate flood-control levées built after the 1936 flooding on the Connecticut River. The Merrimack is an important river of the north-eastern part of the state. Quabbin Reservoir, on the Swift River in the central part of Massachusetts, is the largest body of fresh water in the state.

B

Climate

Massachusetts has a humid continental climate; summers are typically warmer and winters milder than farther north. Cape Cod and the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, however, usually have cooler summer temperatures because of the moderating effects of the ocean, which also give the region somewhat warmer temperatures in winter. Pittsfield, in the west, has an average annual temperature of about 7.2° C (45° F); Boston, in the east, about 10.8° C (51.5° F); and Nantucket, about 9.7° C (49.5° F). The recorded temperature in Massachusetts has ranged from -37.2° C (-35° F), in 1981 at Chester in the west, to 41.7° C (107° F), in 1975 in New Bedford, in the south-east, and Chester.

The coastal areas are prone to severe storms, known as north-easters, and to occasional hurricanes. The state is usually struck by several tornadoes each year; a particularly damaging tornado battered the Worcester area in 1953.