New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the north. Of the 50 U.S. states, New Hampshire is the seventh-smallest by land area and the tenth-least populous, with a population of 1,377,529 residents as of the 2020 census. Concord is the state capital and Manchester is the most populous city. New Hampshire's motto, "Live Free or Die", reflects its role in the American Revolutionary War; its nickname, "The Granite State", refers to its extensive granite formations and quarries. It is well known for holding the first primary in the U.S. presidential election cycle, and its resulting influence on American electoral politics.
New Hampshire was inhabited for thousands of years by Algonquian-speaking peoples such as the Abenaki. Europeans arrived in the 17th century, with the English establishing some of the earliest non-indigenous settlements. The Province of New Hampshire was established in 1629, named after the English county of Hampshire. Following tensions between the British colonies and the crown in the 1760s, New Hampshire saw one of the earliest acts of rebellion, with the seizing of Fort William and Mary from the British in 1774. In 1776, it became the first of the British North American colonies to establish an independent government and state constitution. It signed the United States Declaration of Independence and contributed troops, ships, and supplies in the war against Britain. In 1788, it was the 9th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, bringing it into effect. Through the mid-19th century, New Hampshire was an active center of abolitionism, and fielded close to 32,000 Union soldiers during the U.S. Civil War. Afterwards the state saw rapid industrialization and population growth, becoming a center of textile manufacturing, shoemaking, and papermaking; the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company in Manchester was the largest cotton textile plant in the world. French Canadians formed the most significant influx of immigrants, and a quarter of New Hampshire residents have French American ancestry.
Reflecting a nationwide trend, New Hampshire's industrial sector declined after World War II. Since 1950, its economy has diversified to include financial services, real estate, education, transportation and high-tech, with manufacturing still higher than the US average. Its population surged as highways connected it to Greater Boston and led to more commuter towns. New Hampshire is among the wealthiest and most-educated states, tying Massachusetts for the highest Human Development in the nation. It is one of nine states without an income tax and has no taxes on sales, capital gains, or inheritance while relying heavily on local property taxes to fund education; consequently, its state tax burden is among the lowest in the country. New Hampshire is one of the least religious states and known for its libertarian-leaning political culture; it is one of the least liberal states in New England. The New Hampshire Republican Party has held a trifecta majority in state level government since 2017, with the exception of 2019 and 2020, while the Democratic Party has held a majority on federal level representation in Congress. New Hampshire is the only state to have a woman as governor and women as both U.S. senators.
With its mountainous and heavily forested terrain, New Hampshire has a growing tourism sector centered on recreation. It has some of the highest ski mountains on the East Coast and is a major destination for winter sports; Mount Monadnock is among the most climbed mountains in the world. Other activities include observing the fall foliage, summer cottages along lakes and the seacoast, motorsports at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon, and Motorcycle Week, a motorcycle rally held in Weirs Beach in Laconia. The White Mountain National Forest includes most of the Appalachian Trail between Vermont and Maine, and has the Mount Washington Auto Road, where visitors may drive to the top of Mount Washington.
History
Various Algonquian-speaking Abenaki tribes, largely divided between the Androscoggin, Cowasuck and Pennacook nations, inhabited the area before European colonization. Despite the similar language, they had a very different culture and religion from other Algonquian peoples.Indigenous people lived near Keene, New Hampshire 12,000 years ago, according to 2009 archaeological digs, and the Abenaki were present in New Hampshire in pre-colonial times.
English and French explorers visited New Hampshire in 1600–1605, and David Thompson settled at Odiorne's Point in present-day Rye in 1623. The first permanent European settlement was at Hilton's Point. By 1631, the Upper Plantation comprised modern-day Dover, Durham and Stratham; in 1679, it became the "Royal Province". Father Rale's War was fought between the colonists and the Wabanaki Confederacy throughout New Hampshire.
New Hampshire was one of the Thirteen Colonies that rebelled against British rule during the American Revolution. During the American Revolution, New Hampshire was economically divided. The Seacoast region revolved around sawmills, shipyards, merchants' warehouses, and established village and town centers, where wealthy merchants built substantial homes, furnished them with luxuries, and invested their capital in trade and land speculation. At the other end of the social scale, there developed a permanent class of day laborers, mariners, indentured servants and slaves.
File:Site of first house in New Hampshire, present mansion constructed in 1750, by Gov. W. B. Wentworth.jpg|thumb|left|Site of first house in New Hampshire, present mansion constructed in 1750, by Gov. W. B. Wentworth, In December 1774, Paul Revere warned Patriots that Fort William and Mary would be reinforced with British troops. The following day, John Sullivan raided the fort for weapons. During the raid, the British soldiers fired at rebels with cannon and muskets, but there were apparently no casualties. These were among the first shots in the American Revolutionary period, occurring approximately five months before the Battles of Lexington and Concord. On January 5, 1776, New Hampshire became the first colony to declare independence from Great Britain, almost six months before the Declaration of Independence was signed by the Continental Congress.
File:KingstonNH JosiahBartlettHouse.jpg|thumb|left|The highly industrious Founding Father Josiah Bartlett was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation, and served as a delegate at the Constitutional Convention. He was the first governor of New Hampshire, a medical doctor, and chief justice of the New Hampshire Superior Court of Judicature. The Josiah Bartlett House in Kingston, New Hampshire still stands.
The United States Constitution was ratified by New Hampshire on June 21, 1788, when New Hampshire became the ninth state to do so.
New Hampshire was a Jacksonian stronghold; the state sent Franklin Pierce to the White House in the election of 1852. Industrialization took the form of numerous textile mills, which in turn attracted large flows of immigrants from Quebec and Ireland. The northern parts of the state produced lumber, and the mountains provided tourist attractions. After 1960, the textile industry collapsed, but the economy rebounded as a center of high technology and as a service provider.
Starting in 1952, New Hampshire gained national and international attention for its presidential primary held early in every presidential election year. It immediately became an important testing ground for candidates for the Republican and Democratic nominations but did not necessarily guarantee victory. The media gave New Hampshire and Iowa significant attention compared to other states in the primary process, magnifying the state's decision powers and spurring repeated efforts by out-of-state politicians to change the rules.
Geography
New Hampshire is part of the six-state New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bounded by Quebec, Canada, to the north and northwest; Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east; Massachusetts to the south; and Vermont to the west. New Hampshire's major regions are the Great North Woods, the White Mountains, the Lakes Region, the Seacoast, the Merrimack Valley, the Monadnock Region, and the Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee area. New Hampshire has the shortest ocean coastline of any U.S. coastal state, with a length of, sometimes measured as only.The White Mountains range in New Hampshire spans the north-central portion of the state. The range includes Mount Washington, the tallest in the northeastern U.S.—site of the second-highest wind speed ever recorded— as well as Mount Adams and Mount Jefferson. With hurricane-force winds every third day on average, more than a hundred recorded deaths among visitors, and conspicuous krumholtz, the climate on the upper reaches of Mount Washington has inspired the weather observatory on the peak to claim that the area has the "World's Worst Weather". The White Mountains were home to the rock formation called the Old Man of the Mountain, a face-like profile in Franconia Notch, until the formation disintegrated in May 2003. Even after its loss, the Old Man remains an enduring symbol for the state, seen on state highway signs, automobile license plates, and many government and private entities around New Hampshire.
In southwestern New Hampshire, the landmark Mount Monadnock has given its name to a class of earth-forms—a monadnock—signifying, in geomorphology, any isolated resistant peak rising from a less resistant eroded plain.
New Hampshire has more than 800 lakes and ponds, and approximately of rivers and streams. Major rivers include the Merrimack River, which bisects the lower half of the state north–south before passing into Massachusetts and reaching the sea in Newburyport. Its tributaries include the Contoocook River, Pemigewasset River, and Winnipesaukee River. The Connecticut River, which starts at New Hampshire's Connecticut Lakes and flows south to Connecticut, defines the western border with Vermont. The state border is not in the center of that river, as is usually the case, but at the low-water mark on the Vermont side; meaning the entire river along the Vermont border lies within New Hampshire. Only one town—Pittsburg—shares a land border with the state of Vermont. The "northwesternmost headwaters" of the Connecticut also define part of the Canada–U.S. border.
The Piscataqua River and its several tributaries form the state's only significant ocean port where they flow into the Atlantic at Portsmouth. The Salmon Falls River and the Piscataqua define the southern portion of the border with Maine. The Piscataqua River boundary was the subject of a border dispute between New Hampshire and Maine in 2001, with New Hampshire claiming dominion over several islands that include the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the case in 2002, leaving ownership of the island with Maine. New Hampshire still claims sovereignty of the base, however.
The largest of New Hampshire's lakes is Lake Winnipesaukee, which covers in the east-central part of New Hampshire. Umbagog Lake along the Maine border, approximately, is a distant second. Squam Lake is the second largest lake entirely in New Hampshire.
New Hampshire has the shortest ocean coastline of any state in the United States, approximately long. Hampton Beach is a popular local summer destination. About offshore are the Isles of Shoals, nine small islands known as the site of a 19th-century art colony founded by poet Celia Thaxter, and the alleged location of one of the buried treasures of the pirate Blackbeard.
It is the state with the highest percentage of timberland area in the country. New Hampshire is in the temperate broadleaf and mixed forests biome. Much of the state, in particular the White Mountains, is covered by the conifers and northern hardwoods of the New England-Acadian forests. The southeast corner of the state and parts of the Connecticut River along the Vermont border are covered by the mixed oaks of the Northeastern coastal forests. The state's numerous forests are popular among autumnal leaf peepers seeking the brilliant foliage of the numerous deciduous trees.
The northern third of the state is locally referred to as the "north country" or "north of the notches", in reference to the White Mountain passes that channel traffic. It contains less than 5% of the state's population, suffers relatively high poverty, and is steadily losing population as the logging and paper industries decline. However, the tourist industry, in particular visitors who go to northern New Hampshire to ski, snowboard, hike and mountain bike, has helped offset economic losses from mill closures.
Environmental protection emerged as a key state issue in the early 1900s in response to poor logging practices. In the 1970s, activists defeated a proposal to build an oil refinery along the coast and limited plans for a full-width interstate highway through Franconia Notch to a parkway.
Winter season lengths are projected to decline at ski areas across New Hampshire due to the effects of climate change, which is likely to continue the historic contraction and consolidation of the ski industry and threaten individual ski businesses and communities that rely on ski tourism.