New England in the context of "Springfield, Massachusetts"

Vermont (/vərˈmɒnt/ ) is a landlocked state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the north. According to the most recent U.S. census estimates, the state has an estimated population of 648,493, making it the second-least populated of all U.S. states. It is the nation's sixth-smallest state by total area. The state's capital of Montpelier is the least populous U.S. state capital. No other U.S. state has a most populous city with fewer residents than Burlington.

Native Americans have inhabited the area for about 12,000 years. The competitive tribes of the Algonquian-speaking Abenaki and Iroquoian-speaking Mohawk were active in the area at the time of European encounter. During the 17th century, French colonists claimed the territory as part of New France. Conflict arose when the Kingdom of Great Britain began to settle colonies to the south along the Atlantic coast; France was defeated in 1763 in the Seven Years' War, ceding its territory east of the Mississippi River to Britain. Thereafter, the nearby British Thirteen Colonies disputed the extent of the area called the New Hampshire Grants to the west of the Connecticut River, encompassing present-day Vermont. The provincial government of New York sold land grants to settlers in the region, which conflicted with earlier grants from the government of New Hampshire. The Green Mountain Boys militia protected the interests of the established New Hampshire land grant settlers. Ultimately, a group of settlers with New Hampshire land grant titles established the Vermont Republic in 1777 as an independent state during the American Revolutionary War. The Vermont Republic abolished slavery before any other U.S. state. It was admitted to the Union in 1791 as the 14th state.

New York, also called New York State, is a state in the northeastern United States. Bordered by the New England states to the east, Canada to the north, and Pennsylvania and New Jersey to the south, its territory extends into both the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Lakes. New York is the fourth-most populous state in the United States, with nearly 20 million residents, and the 27th-largest state by area, with a total area of 54,556 square miles (141,300 km).

New York has a varied geography. The southeastern part of the state, known as Downstate, encompasses New York City, the most populous city in the United States; Long Island, with approximately 40% of the state's population, the nation's most populous island; and the cities, suburbs, and wealthy enclaves of the lower Hudson Valley. These areas are the center of the expansive New York metropolitan area and account for approximately two-thirds of the state's population. The larger Upstate area spreads from the Great Lakes to Lake Champlain and includes the Adirondack Mountains and the Catskill Mountains (part of the wider Appalachian Mountains). The east–west Mohawk River Valley bisects the more mountainous regions of Upstate and flows into the north–south Hudson River valley near the state capital of Albany. Western New York, home to the cities of Buffalo and Rochester, is part of the Great Lakes region and borders Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. Central New York is anchored by the city of Syracuse; between the central and western parts of the state, New York is prominently featured by the Finger Lakes, a popular tourist destination. To the south, along the state border with Pennsylvania, the Southern Tier sits atop the Allegheny Plateau, representing some of the northernmost reaches of Appalachia.

Tour skating is recreational long distance ice skating on natural ice. It is particularly popular in the Netherlands and the Nordic countries. It is becoming more popular in areas of North America such as New England, Southcentral Alaska, and Nova Scotia.

While Nordic skating usually involves tours over open ice on marshes, lakes, rivers, or sea, in the Netherlands skaters follow marked routes on frozen canals and connected lakes. Consequently, there are differences in equipment and skating styles between these two regions. Alaskans often include winter camping on longer journeys of a hundred miles or more.

The Wisconsin glaciation, also called the Wisconsin glacial episode, was the most recent glacial period of the North American ice sheet complex, peaking more than 20,000 years ago. This advance included the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, which nucleated in the northern North American Cordillera; the Innuitian ice sheet, which extended across the Canadian Arctic Archipelago; the Greenland ice sheet; and the massive Laurentide Ice Sheet, which covered the high latitudes of central and eastern North America. This advance was synchronous with global glaciation during the last glacial period, including the North American alpine glacier advance, known as the Pinedale glaciation. The Wisconsin glaciation extended from about 75,000 to 11,000 years ago, between the Sangamonian Stage and the current interglacial, the Holocene. The maximum ice extent occurred about 25,000–21,000 years ago during the last glacial maximum, also known as the Late Wisconsin in North America.

This glaciation radically altered the geography north of the Ohio River, creating the Great Lakes. At the height of the Wisconsin Episode glaciation, the ice sheet covered most of Canada, the Upper Midwest, and New England, as well as parts of Idaho, Montana, and Washington. On Kelleys Island in Lake Erie, northern New Jersey and in New York City's Central Park, the grooves left in rock by these glaciers can be easily observed. In southwestern Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta a suture zone between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets formed the Cypress Hills, North America's northernmost point that remained south of the continental ice sheets. During much of the glaciation, sea level was low enough to permit land animals, including humans, to occupy Beringia (the Bering Land Bridge) and move between North America and Siberia. As the glaciers retreated, glacial lakes were breached in great glacial lake outburst floods such as the Kankakee Torrent, which reshaped the landscape south of modern Chicago as far as the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.

Congregationalism (also Congregational Churches or Congregationalist Churches) is a Reformed Christian (Calvinist) tradition of Protestant Christianity in which churches practice congregational government. Each congregation independently and autonomously runs its own affairs. These principles are enshrined in the Cambridge Platform (1648) and the Savoy Declaration (1658), Congregationalist confessions of faith. The Congregationalist Churches are a continuity of the theological tradition upheld by the Puritans. Their genesis was through the work of Congregationalist divines Robert Browne, Henry Barrowe, and John Greenwood.

In the United Kingdom, the Puritan Reformation of the Church of England laid the foundation for such churches. In England, early Congregationalists were called Separatists or Independents to distinguish them from the similarly Calvinistic Presbyterians, whose churches embraced a polity based on the governance of elders; this commitment to self-governing congregations was codified in the Savoy Declaration. Congregationalism in the United States traces its origins to the Puritans of New England, who wrote the Cambridge Platform of 1648 to describe the autonomy of the church and its association with others. Within the United States, the model of Congregational churches was carried by migrating settlers from New England into New York, then into the Old Northwest, and further.

A New England city and town area (NECTA) was a geographic and statistical entity defined by the U.S. federal government for use in the six-state New England region of the United States. NECTAs are analogous to metropolitan statistical areas and micropolitan statistical areas and are defined using the same criteria, except that they are defined on the basis of New England towns instead of entire counties. NECTAs are classified as either metropolitan or micropolitan NECTAs. A micropolitan NECTA has an urban core with a population of at least 10,000 but less than 50,000, whereas a metropolitan NECTA has an urban core with a population of at least 50,000. Tabulations of census information by NECTA was discontinued effective July 2023.

In New England, towns (which are classified by the United States Census Bureau as minor civil divisions) are a much more important level of government than counties. Because towns are smaller than counties, a NECTA usually provides a much closer approximation to the real metropolitan area than a metropolitan statistical area does.

Connecticut (/kəˈnɛtɪkət/ kə-NET-ih-kət) is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capital is Hartford, and its most populous city is Bridgeport. Connecticut lies between the major hubs of New York City and Boston along the Northeast Corridor, where the New York-Newark Combined Statistical Area, which includes four of Connecticut's seven largest cities, extends into the southwestern part of the state. Connecticut is the third-smallest state by area after Rhode Island and Delaware, and the 29th most populous with more than 3.6 million residents as of 2024, ranking it fourth among the most densely populated U.S. states.

The state is named after the Connecticut River, the longest in New England, which roughly bisects the state and drains into the Long Island Sound between the towns of Old Saybrook and Old Lyme. The name of the river is in turn derived from anglicized spellings of Quinnetuket, a Mohegan-Pequot word for "long tidal river". Before the arrival of the first European settlers, the region was inhabited by various Algonquian tribes. In 1633, the Dutch West India Company established a small, short-lived settlement called House of Hope in Hartford. Half of Connecticut was initially claimed by the Dutch colony New Netherland, which included much of the land between the Connecticut and Delaware Rivers, although the first major settlements were established by the English around the same time. Thomas Hooker led a band of followers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony to form the Connecticut Colony, while other settlers from Massachusetts founded the Saybrook Colony and the New Haven Colony; both had merged into the first by 1664.

Rhode Island (/ˌroʊd -/ ROHD) is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Connecticut to its west; Massachusetts to its north and east; and the Atlantic Ocean to its south via Rhode Island Sound and Block Island Sound; and shares a small maritime border with New York, east of Long Island. Rhode Island is the smallest U.S. state by area and the seventh-least populous, with slightly more than 1.1 million residents as of 2024. The state's population, however, has continually recorded growth in every decennial census since 1790, and it is the second-most densely populated state after New Jersey. The state takes its name from the eponymous island, though most of its land area is on the mainland. Providence is its capital and most populous city.

Native Americans lived around Narragansett Bay before English settlers began arriving in the early 17th century. Rhode Island was unique among the Thirteen British Colonies in having been founded by a refugee, Roger Williams, who fled religious persecution in the Massachusetts Bay Colony to establish a haven for religious liberty. He founded Providence in 1636 on land purchased from local tribes, creating the first settlement in North America with an explicitly secular government. The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations subsequently became a destination for religious and political dissenters and social outcasts, earning it the moniker "Rogue's Island".

Block Island is an island of the Outer Lands coastal archipelago in New England, located approximately 9 miles (14 km) south of mainland Rhode Island and 14 miles (23 km) east of Long Island's Montauk Point. The island is coterminous with the town of New Shoreham, Rhode Island, and is part of Washington County. The island is named after Dutch explorer Adriaen Block, and the town was named for Shoreham, West Sussex, in England.

Block Island is a popular summer tourist destination known for its bicycling, hiking, sailing, fishing, surfing and beaches. It is home to the historic lighthouses Block Island North Light, on the northern tip of the island, and Block Island Southeast Light, on the southeastern coast. About 40 percent of the island is set aside for conservation, and much of the northwestern tip of the island is an undeveloped natural area and resting stop for birds along the Atlantic flyway. The Nature Conservancy includes Block Island on its list of "The Last Great Places", which consists of 12 sites in the Western Hemisphere.

40°36′48″N 74°02′53″W / 40.61333°N 74.04806°W / 40.61333; -74.04806

The Narrows is the tidal strait separating the boroughs of Staten Island and Brooklyn in New York City. It connects the Upper New York Bay and Lower New York Bay (of larger New York Bay) and forms the principal channel by which the Hudson River flowing south from upstate New York and the New England regions, empties into the Atlantic Ocean. It has long been considered to be the maritime gateway to New York City and the Northeastern United States on the East Coast of North America, and historically has been one of the most important entrances into the seaport harbors of the Port of New York and New Jersey.