United States, Northeast

The northeastern united states is often referred to as New England and includes the states of Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Most of the area is part of the northern end of the Appalachian Mountains where winters are cold and snowy. The states that occupy the region were settled by the Puritans and their descendants. Other immigrant groups have also come in the 19th and 20th centuries from Ireland, Portugal, Italy, and French-speaking Canada.

Maine is in the northeast corner of the United States and is the largest of the New England states. Its city of Eastport is the most easterly of all American cities. Along with New Hampshire and Massachusetts, Maine is bound by the Atlantic Ocean on its eastern side. On the west, it is bounded by New Hampshire and by the Canadian province of Quebec. The Canadian province of New Brunswick bounds it on the northeastern side.

Maine's coast is in the first of three land regions, which are the Coastal Lowlands, the Eastern New England Upland, and the White Mountain Region. The Coastal Lowlands extend from the Atlantic coast between 10 and 40 miles inland and form a strip along Maine's Atlantic shoreline. It is part of a larger region of land that stretches along the entire New England coast.

The Coastal Lowlands area does not rise much above sea level. It has broad sandy beaches that give way to salt marshes. During earlier ice ages, it was depressed from much greater heights by the great weight of glaciers. The southern part of Maine's coast has numerous sandy beaches. Old Orchard Beach is a hard packed sandy beach that is 11 miles (18 kilometers) long. It is one of the longest of all sandy beaches on the Atlantic coast of the United States. The coast is a lowland area in which farming of cranberries, blueberries, beef cattle, and poultry is done. The northern part of the Coastal Lowlands is rocky and dominated by high cliffs. Deposits of sand, gravel, granite, and limestone are mined for construction and other uses.

Maine is best known for its rocky northern coast. Along the Maine coast are over 400 islands that are from two to 25 square miles (five to 65 square kilometers) in size. There are also thousands of smaller islands. The largest is Mount Desert, which is about 100 square miles (260 square kilometers). There are numerous ports with deep water where ships harbor along Maine's 3,000mile long coastline. Fishing for lobster and other deep sea fishing are major industries.

The Eastern New England Upland area occupies the middle part of Maine. It is a belt between 20 and 50 miles (32 to 80 kilometers) wide and is part of an uplifted shelf that extends from Connecticut [Page 1846]to Canada. The northern area covers Maine's entire border with New Brunswick except for the thin Coastal Lowlands strip. Some areas of this region are several thousand feet above sea level. Dairy and beef cattle are raised in the area. The Aroostook Plateau in the northeast has deep, fertile soil; excellent for farming, it has made Maine famous as a potato producing state. Forestry is important in the region as it is in other parts of Maine. Its mountains look green all year long because of the vast number of trees covering nearly 90 percent of the state. The Eastern New England Upland area has a great number of lakes south of the Aroostook Plateau. In the center of the Upland area, mountains cut across, as do swift-moving steams fed by melting snows.

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