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00:00It was home to four of the thirteen original colonies, and has been called the birthplace
00:08of America ever since.
00:11New England.
00:12It was here that the Pilgrims first set foot in the New World, where religious exiles built
00:20a dazzling city known as the Cradle of Liberty, and where a rebellious Tea Party triggered
00:26a Revolutionary War, a war first waged by brave patriots right here on New England's
00:32soil, where monuments to their sacrifices still stand today.
00:36But the story of New England is much more than the birth of a nation.
00:41It's also the story of those who fought to secure many of the liberties that Americans
00:45hold dear.
00:47Their First Amendment right to freedom of speech, the separation of church and state,
00:53and the right to bear arms, which militiamen used to defend their land and fight a Revolutionary
00:58War.
01:00In New England, ancient cliffs are home to the colorful legends of a Native American
01:06tribe.
01:07A writer named Thoreau famously celebrated the beauty of the natural world, and hard-working
01:14fishermen still reap the great bounties of the sea.
01:18From the air, there's no end to the wonders of New England, from the brilliant colors
01:24that blanket Vermont's mountains every fall, to the pristine lakes on Maine's northern
01:30border, to a marvel of the Industrial Age that still chugs up the flags of New Hampshire's
01:36highest peak, to the rocky shores of Connecticut's stunning coast, and the lively creatures that
01:43flock to one tiny Massachusetts island every year to breed.
01:48New England may cover six very different states, but every fall, they unite behind
01:53one winning team, right here in the land where the game of football was invented.
01:59This is the endlessly fascinating story of New England.
02:18In May 1602, an English ship called the Concord approached the coast of what's now Massachusetts.
02:47On board was an explorer named Bartholomew Gosnold, who was hoping to establish the first
02:53English settlement in America.
02:55At the time, this region hadn't even been named New England yet, which is one reason
03:01Gosnold felt free to give his own names to the islands and landforms he passed by.
03:07He named one Cape Cod, after the fish he saw teeming around his boat, and a nearby island,
03:13Martha's Vineyard, after his daughter.
03:16Gosnold and his crew chose this tiny island as the site for what they hoped would be a
03:21permanent settlement.
03:24A stone monument here, on what's now Cuddehunk Island, marks the spot where they constructed
03:28a small fort to protect themselves in case they were attacked.
03:33But within just a few weeks, they realized they might not survive, since they were low
03:37on supplies.
03:39And so they decided to pack up everything they had and return to England.
03:45Gosnold's attempt at settlement had failed, but he did become the first documented Englishman
03:50to set foot on what later became New England.
03:54He would also earn fame five years later, helping settle the Jamestown colony in Virginia.
04:01But it would be more than a decade before a new group of English settlers landed here
04:05on the Massachusetts coast, and finally kicked off the transformation of New England.
04:12When the sun rises over Cape Cod, it looks like an enormous arm reaching out into the
04:19Atlantic Ocean, beckoning to those who sail past its shores.
04:25And that's exactly what it did, in November 1620, to the Pilgrims, as they sailed past
04:31on the most famous ship in American history, the Mayflower.
04:36The Mayflower's more than 130 passengers and crew were on their way to the Hudson River,
04:41in what was then considered Virginia, when a storm forced them to seek shelter inside
04:46Cape Cod's comforting arm, in what's now Provincetown Harbor.
04:52Today, a monument to their historic landing towers over Provincetown.
04:59The Pilgrims were fleeing to the New World because they had been persecuted for their
05:03religious beliefs.
05:05They believed that the Church of England was deeply corrupted, and so they had tried to
05:10start a new church of their own, for which their leaders were harassed and imprisoned.
05:15This monument is a tribute to their brave journey to seek freedom in America.
05:22But winter was setting in, and the Pilgrims and the others on board were fearful of storms
05:26and dangerous shoals.
05:28So they decided to stay here, in New England, instead of continuing on.
05:34In the middle of December, they pulled up anchor in Provincetown, and sailed across
05:39Cape Cod Bay, to a more sheltered harbor they named Plymouth.
05:47Legend has it that upon their arrival in New England, the Pilgrims used a large granite
05:52boulder on the shore as their stepping stone to freedom.
05:56Today, Plymouth Rock is one of Cape Cod's biggest tourist attractions.
06:01There's no evidence from the time that this rock was actually used by the Pilgrims, but
06:05it remains a powerful symbol of their pursuit of liberty.
06:12Nearby lies an almost perfect replica of the original Mayflower.
06:17It was on board that the Pilgrims and others came to a remarkable agreement that sowed
06:22the seeds of American democracy.
06:25When they had set sail from England, they were carrying a signed charter that permitted
06:29them to settle in what was then Virginia, but they had no such permission to start a
06:33new colony here in New England, and conflicts soon arose on board about what they should
06:38do next.
06:39To maintain order, they drew up a simple agreement that later came to be known as the Mayflower
06:45Compact.
06:46It stated that the colonists would agree to abide by laws and regulations that they would
06:52establish themselves, since there were no colonial laws yet in place in New England
06:56to govern them.
06:58The Mayflower Compact was signed by 41 men on the ship, and was the first outline for
07:03an independent, self-governing community in the New World.
07:12But many of those who arrived on the Mayflower never got much of a chance to take part in
07:16their new, democratic experiment.
07:19The journey to America had been hard, and building a new settlement in the wilderness
07:24in the middle of December quickly took its toll.
07:28Almost 50% of those who had arrived on the Mayflower died during their first winter from
07:33disease and exposure.
07:35The survivors forged on and finished building an English village with simple timber houses,
07:41plots for farming, and pens for livestock.
07:46That first New England colony has been reconstructed here, just outside of town.
07:51It's called Plymouth Plantation, and is about one-third the size of the Pilgrim's original
07:56settlement.
07:58When spring finally arrived, members of a Native American tribe called the Wapanoag
08:03paid them a surprise visit and taught them how to plant corn and other Native American
08:08crops, crops that would ultimately help ensure their survival.
08:13When those crops produced a bounty the next fall, the Pilgrims and the Indians celebrated
08:17their successful harvest together in what is considered to be the very first Thanksgiving.
08:24Many famous names in America are descendants of those who arrived on the Mayflower.
08:29They include Marilyn Monroe, George Bush, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Clint Eastwood.
08:36Before the arrival of Europeans, the Wapanoag inhabited most of the land that's now Massachusetts
08:44and Rhode Island.
08:45They were farmers, hunters, and fishermen.
08:50Thousands of members of their tribe once lived here, on the island of Martha's Vineyard,
08:55which the Wapanoag called Nopi.
08:59On the western tip of the island lie the Aquinnah Cliffs, which are home to one of the tribe's
09:03most colorful legends.
09:07Tribal elders still tell stories of a mythical giant named Moshe, who waded out into the
09:13waters to catch whales for his daily meal.
09:17To kill them, he flung the whales against the cliffs, which turned the earth here blood-red.
09:24The fires he then used to roast them stained the cliffs charcoal gray.
09:31But while many of the Wapanoag's legends survived after the arrival of Europeans, most of the
09:36tribe did not.
09:38Diseases carried to New England by European explorers and traders wiped out at least 75%
09:44or more of the tribe.
09:46When the Pilgrims and others arrived to settle New England, there were actually not many
09:50Native Americans left to challenge them.
09:56Today, roughly 300 members of the Wapanoag tribe live on a reservation centered around
10:03their sacred Aquinnah Cliffs.
10:07Thousands of visitors come here every summer to catch a glimpse of the cliffs from the
10:11top of Gay Head Light.
10:14A wooden lighthouse was first built here in 1799.
10:18This one dates from 1856 and is one of more than 200 that still dot the New England coast
10:24today.
10:27But it's taken extreme measures to keep some of them still standing, including this one
10:32on the nearby island of Nantucket.
10:34It's known as Sankity Head Light.
10:38By 2007, this famous landmark was perched dangerously on the edge of an eroding bluff.
10:44That's when a group of Nantucket residents pooled their funds, bought the lighthouse
10:48from the U.S. government, and then moved it almost 400 feet back from the shore.
10:54Today, its light still offers guidance to mariners in New England storms.
11:03Smaller than Martha's Vineyard and more remote, Nantucket is home to just 10,000 people during
11:08the winter months, but come summer, its population soars to 60,000.
11:14To get here, most take ferries from the Vineyard or Cape Cod across Nantucket Sound.
11:23On their way, these vessels have to steer clear of the sandbars that surround Nantucket's
11:27tiny Muskegood Island.
11:31This little stretch of sand is home to one of the largest breeding grounds for gray seals
11:36in the nation.
11:40From December to February, hundreds of these seals flock to Muskegood to breed.
11:47But scientists fear that the rising seal population here on the island is a threat to the birds
11:52that also call Muskegood home.
12:04The remoteness of Nantucket helped keep early English settlers away, at least until 1659,
12:11when a group of investors bought it for 30 British pounds and two beaver hats, one for
12:16the seller and one for his wife.
12:19By then, New England was booming.
12:21British ships offloaded thousands of new settlers on its shores every year, and they soon fanned
12:27out across a region that would ultimately become the six states of Connecticut, Rhode
12:32Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and, the largest of them all, Maine.
12:41What kicked off this new wave of settlement was the arrival of the Puritans.
12:49In 1630, a flotilla of 11 ships, commanded by Puritan leader John Winthrop, arrived here
12:55on the Massachusetts coast, north of the Pilgrim's Colony in Plymouth.
13:01Winthrop soon founded the city of Boston, which became a haven for tens of thousands
13:05of Puritans, who soon arrived from England in what's known as the Great Migration.
13:10To ensure that there were enough clergy for their growing numbers, Puritan leaders established
13:15a new seminary just outside of Boston, in Cambridge, in 1636.
13:20Today, that school is known as Harvard University, and is the oldest institution of higher education
13:26in the United States.
13:29It was named after John Harvard, a Puritan minister and the school's first benefactor.
13:34Like the Pilgrims, the Puritans were also religious exiles, but while the Pilgrims wanted
13:39to form a separate church from the Church of England, the Puritans only wanted to reform
13:44or purify it, which is how they got their name.
13:47Boston quickly became the capital of the Puritans' vast new Massachusetts Bay Colony.
13:54But despite having come to New England to be able to freely practice their own faith,
13:58the Puritans ruled Massachusetts with an iron fist.
14:02They imposed laws that punished those who failed to follow their strict beliefs.
14:07One was a minister named Roger Williams.
14:11For the Puritans, there was no separation of church and state, but Williams believed
14:16that faith was a very personal matter and should not be governed by law.
14:21He was also sympathetic to Native Americans' land rights, which helped turn him into an
14:25outcast.
14:27Boston leaders ordered that he be shipped off to jail in England, so Williams decided
14:31to make a run for it.
14:33He headed west and worked out a deal with an Aragonset tribe to buy land here, at the
14:38confluence of the Wenaskwitucket and Moshassuck rivers.
14:42He named the site Providence and declared that it would be a haven for anyone in New
14:47England seeking religious freedom.
14:50In 1663, the King of England granted Williams and other leaders here permission to join
14:56their settlements under a new colony called Rhode Island, probably named after one of
15:01the islands offshore.
15:03Today, standing proud on the dome of the Rhode Island State House is a sculpture known as
15:08the Independent Man.
15:11It honors the ideas of freedom of religion and separation of church and state that Rhode
15:15Island was founded on, and which later inspired the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights.
15:22Nearby stands the soaring spire of the First Baptist Church in America, which Williams
15:27co-founded.
15:28Rhode Island's coastal city of Newport also became a haven for those of other faiths.
15:35Jewish settlers even arrived here from Barbados in the 1650s.
15:40Newport's Toro Synagogue is the oldest synagogue still standing in America.
15:45Nearby, the Quakers established their own house of worship.
15:50In Massachusetts, Puritans banished Quakers for what they claimed were radical beliefs.
15:56For Quakers, God was within each person in the form of an inner light.
16:01At simple meeting houses like this one, they gathered in silence, until that inner light
16:06inspired them individually to stand up and share their thoughts with the others.
16:11The idea that God worked directly through the faithful without intermediaries like priests
16:17was a radical and threatening idea for the Puritans, as was the Quakers' belief in the
16:22equality of women.
16:26In 1657, a Quaker woman from Newport named Mary Dyer went to Boston and began teaching
16:32others about her newfound Quaker faith, but she was arrested and ordered to hang.
16:38Right here in the middle of Boston Common, she was led to the gallows.
16:43As the noose was tied around her neck, Dyer declared,
16:46I came to do the will of my father, and in obedience to his will, I stand even to the death.
16:53Mary Dyer was executed on June 1st, 1660, in a city that had been founded three decades
17:00earlier as a cradle of liberty.
17:05King Charles II was so disturbed by Dyer's death that he forbade the Puritans from using
17:11capital or corporal punishment on Quakers.
17:14Over time, tolerance in Massachusetts grew, and just over one century later, colonists
17:19of all stripes across New England would unite to fight for their freedom against British rule.
17:27If there is any event in New England as famous as the landing of the Pilgrims, it's what
17:32happened on December 16th, 1773, here in Boston.
17:37On that night, thousands of colonists flooded into Boston's Old South Meeting House, the
17:42largest building in the city at the time.
17:45The meeting had been called by the Sons of Liberty, men who were leading a protest of
17:49a new British tax on tea.
17:52Now it was finally time to take action.
17:55John Hancock, a wealthy Boston merchant, spurred the crowd on, declaring,
18:01Let every man do what is right in his own eyes.
18:05Soon after, the Sons of Liberty raced down to Boston Harbor.
18:08They boarded three ships at Griffin's Wharf and began tossing their cargos of tea overboard.
18:16When they were done, three hours later, 342 chests of tea were floating in Boston Harbor.
18:23The Boston Tea Party was mainly a symbolic act, but it sent a powerful message to England
18:29that America's colonists were getting tired of taxation without representation, since
18:34they had no right to actually vote on the taxes and laws imposed on them by the British
18:38Parliament.
18:39Today, re-enactors bring the spirit of the Boston Tea Party alive all day, almost every
18:45day, for visitors here aboard a replica of one of the tea-laden ships.
18:51But after the real event, Britain took immediate action.
18:56Within months, it shut down the port of Boston in retaliation, cutting it off from the outside
19:00world.
19:02Meanwhile, American rebels began to stockpile weapons in Concord, 20 miles northwest of
19:08Boston.
19:09When the British learned of the stockpile, they made plans to raid it.
19:14On April 18, 1775, two rebels climbed to the top of the tallest building in the city at
19:19the time, the Old North Church, near Boston Harbor.
19:24They had agreed to flash either one or two lanterns from the bell tower, to warn their
19:28fellow patriots across the river how the British were beginning their advance.
19:34The famous phrase, one if by land, two if by sea, was how poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
19:40later described it in his famous poem, Paul Revere's Ride.
19:45Paul Revere was a rebel and silversmith who lived near the church in this house at 19
19:50North Square.
19:52After the signal was given with two lanterns from the nearby bell tower, Revere and another
19:57rider set out from Boston on their famous midnight ride.
20:01To avoid British patrols, Revere took a northern route, while William Dawes took a southern
20:06route, to warn their fellow rebels in Concord of the impending raid.
20:11But soon after they met up in Lexington, they ran into British forces.
20:15Revere was caught and Dawes was thrown from his horse, but a third rider who joined them,
20:20Samuel Preskin, made a daring escape, and was the only midnight rider to make it all
20:25the way to Concord and inform his fellow patriots that the Redcoats were coming.
20:31As the sun rose the next morning, 77 patriots, known as Militiamen, were gathered here at
20:37Lexington Green, ready to meet the British forces head on.
20:42A statue to those Militiamen now stands tall on the Green, to honor their bravery and the
20:47eight men who lost their lives in that first battle.
20:50With the rebels at Lexington defeated, the British moved on to Concord, and destroyed
20:55what was left of the stockpiles.
21:01But the Patriots' numbers swelled, and they soon found themselves face to face with the
21:05British forces here at Concord's North Bridge.
21:11It was a Redcoat who raised his rifle and fired first.
21:17Ralph Waldo Emerson later called that bullet, the shot heard round the world.
21:23As the Patriots fired back, they forced the British into retreat, and then pursued and
21:27fired on them almost the entire way back to Boston Harbor.
21:31In the end, 73 British soldiers died on that day, while 49 Militiamen lost their lives
21:37trying to defend their freedom.
21:43Within just two months, the British discovered again that the American rebels were a force
21:48to contend with.
21:49This impressive stone tower commemorates Boston's famous Battle of Bunker Hill.
21:55It was built in 1842 near the site of the battle.
21:58On June 17, 1775, 1,200 colonial fighters tried to fight off a British attack launched
22:05from nearby Boston Harbor.
22:08British troops managed to beat the rebels into retreat, but only after being badly battered
22:13themselves.
22:16What the Battles of Concord and Bunker Hill proved was that America's colonists posed
22:20a real threat to the British, despite their better trained and more powerful army.
22:27New England had set the stage for America's Revolutionary War.
22:38Even today, a fighting spirit is still part of New Englanders' DNA, especially when they
22:44fill the stands here at Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox, New England's only
22:49professional baseball team, and its famous Green Monster, the more than 37-foot-high
22:55green wall that stretches across left field.
22:59And in the fall, New Englanders unite outside Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts,
23:05to cheer on the only professional football team in New England's six states, the New
23:09England Patriots, also known as the Pats.
23:14Out of their eight appearances in the Super Bowl, they've won it four times, making the
23:18Patriots one of the NFL's top six teams.
23:23Starting in 2001, the Pats were led to victory by star quarterback and triple MVP, Tom Brady.
23:31There's a good reason New Englanders are especially passionate about football.
23:35They've been fans longer than just about anyone else.
23:39That's because the game was pretty much born here in the late 1800s, thanks to a player
23:43at Yale University in Connecticut named Walter Camp, who came up with many of the basic rules
23:50that differentiate football from rugby.
23:53He's been known as the father of American football ever since.
23:59In 1903, Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, built the first football stadium
24:05in America.
24:06It still stands here next to the Charles River.
24:11In its early years, college football was a brutal and bloody game.
24:17Protective gear like pads and helmets wasn't required.
24:21Teams often just fought with each other for possession of the ball.
24:24But what's amazing is that college players weren't just getting badly injured on the
24:29field.
24:30Many were actually dying from their injuries.
24:33A Chicago Tribune article called the 1905 football season a death harvest.
24:39That year alone, there were 18 fatalities on the field.
24:44Many schools decided to ban football altogether.
24:48But a coach at Harvard named Bill Reed led a charge to make the game safe.
24:53He introduced the forward pass to spread players out.
24:57And he proposed a neutral zone between the scrimmage lines to keep them from fighting.
25:02Gradually, football became a safer sport and began to thrive again at Harvard Stadium,
25:08which was expanded in 1910 with the Roman colonnade that now towers over the stands.
25:14Down in New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University built a new football field of its own, even
25:19bigger than Harvard's.
25:22When the Yale Bowl opened in 1914, it was the largest stadium in the world at the time.
25:29Its bowl-like design became the norm for professional stadiums across the country.
25:35On their new fields, Harvard and Yale helped forge a comeback for football and make it
25:40the game it is today.
25:42Ever since, Harvard's Crimson has been facing off against Yale's Bulldogs in their legendary
25:48annual matchup known simply as The Game.
25:57For more than a century before America was settled by the English, fishermen and adventurers
26:02from European countries navigated its rugged northern coast.
26:08They often traded with the Native American tribes that had called it home for millennia.
26:14Some say that even the Vikings once set foot on New England's shores.
26:24But England first cemented its claim to this region with the name New England in 1614.
26:32That's when an Englishman named John Smith made the first map of the coasts of what are
26:36now Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine.
26:40In a small boat, with only the simplest of surveying tools, Smith and his crew documented
26:45many of the inlets and natural harbors that still line this coast today.
26:52At the time, the English still considered this region to be part of what they called
26:56Northern Virginia.
26:58It was Smith who first gave it the name New England.
27:02Six years later, his map was carried on board the Mayflower.
27:10But it was Smith's reports of the plentiful supply of codfish offshore that led to the
27:14founding of New Hampshire just three years after the Pilgrim's arrival.
27:20In 1623, a group of English investors and fishermen arrived here at the entrance of
27:27the Piscataqua River, hoping to catch, salt and export cod to England.
27:33Their small settlement thrived and became the city of Portsmouth.
27:39Unlike other early New England colonies, New Hampshire wasn't founded as a safe haven for
27:44religious exiles.
27:46It was created as a business venture to reap the bounty of the sea.
27:54New Hampshire has just 13 miles of coastline, which means it has the smallest coast of any
28:00state in the nation.
28:03But thousands flock to their tiny wedge of shore every year.
28:07They belong to a state that was the first to have its own Constitution and Bill of Rights.
28:14People in New Hampshire have been proud of their state motto, Live Free or Die, ever
28:19since.
28:21And if there's any place in the state where people come to embrace that live free spirit,
28:25it's here, on the very top of New Hampshire's Mount Monadnock.
28:32This is the most hiked mountain in America and the third most in the world, after Japan's
28:37Mount Fuji and China's Mount Tai.
28:40Monadnock is a Native American Abenaki word that means, the mountain that stands alone.
28:47It's hard to imagine it today, but Monadnock's peak was originally covered with trees, just
28:53like the mountains around it are today.
28:56But in the 1800s, settlers lit the trees at the base of the mountain on fire, in order
29:01to turn forests into pasture.
29:04Soon after, they torched the trees again, to clear out wolves that they thought were
29:08living on Monadnock's rocky flanks.
29:12Over time, rain, wind, and water eroded the soil, revealing great ancient rock forms that
29:19were once hidden under Monadnock's peak.
29:22Today, with its giant exposed globs of schist, quartzite, and granite, rising to 3,000 feet,
29:30Mount Monadnock is one of New England's most stunning natural forms.
29:36But New England's highest peak lies just over 100 miles to the north.
29:42It tops out at 6,288 feet, and is known as Mount Washington.
29:48On clear days, you can look out from the summit right into Canada.
29:52But in bad weather, the high reaches of Mount Washington can be a death zone, with some
29:59of the coldest and most terrifying winds anywhere on Earth.
30:03That's what it was like on April 12, 1934, when multiple storm systems from Canada, the
30:09Atlantic Ocean, the South, and the Great Lakes all converged right here, on the tip
30:15of this New Hampshire mountain.
30:18At the time, researchers were hunkered down in this simple observatory that still stands
30:23on the summit, to measure wind speed on the top of the mountain.
30:27In the middle of the night, as the wind howled around them, they were forced to scramble
30:31out onto the roof and use wooden clubs to knock the ice off the devices used to measure
30:36the wind's velocity.
30:38Their efforts resulted in a remarkable finding the next day.
30:43At 1.21 p.m., a gust shot the meter up to 231 miles an hour, the highest natural wind
30:51velocity ever recorded on Earth at the time.
30:57The extreme conditions on Mount Washington were what inspired one of the great wonders
31:01of the Industrial Age.
31:08In 1868, great clouds of steam and smoke started blasting into the air, as the first mountain-climbing
31:15cog railway in the world began chugging up the steep flanks of Mount Washington.
31:21It was the creation of a New Hampshire engineer and inventor named Sylvester Marsh.
31:26In 1852, Marsh and a friend were hiking up the mountain when a sudden storm forced them
31:32to scramble to the top and seek shelter in this small stone structure known as the Tip-Top
31:37House.
31:39That's what inspired Marsh to imagine a railway that could carry passengers up and down the
31:45mountain no matter what the weather.
31:50In 1858, New Hampshire legislators finally granted him permission to build it, though
31:56some thought his chances of success were almost zero.
31:59Let him build a railroad to the moon, one reportedly said.
32:04Soon, teams of men and oxen were hauling equipment, timber and steel up to Mount Washington.
32:10To keep the steam engine, cars and passengers from simply sliding down the tracks, Marsh
32:16invented a ratchet, or cog, that could hold the cars at any place in the track during
32:21the steep ascent.
32:23It was the first cog railroad design in the world, and would soon become popular in other
32:27mountainous places like the Swiss Alps.
32:31Here on Mount Washington, Marsh's railway has been in almost continuous operation ever
32:36since 1869.
32:39One of its engines runs on coal and steam, which create these great clouds of smoke.
32:47The 3,500-foot journey to the summit, and back down, takes three full hours.
32:53But it's well worth it, just for the view.
33:02But come fall in New England, there is wonder to behold just about everywhere, thanks to
33:09a miracle of science and nature.
33:13It's one of the most amazing natural spectacles in the world, and turns entire forests into
33:20blankets of red, yellow and gold.
33:24In some places, they're so vivid, they even seem unreal, and make New England's family
33:31farms look like they're right out of a postcard.
33:39It all starts in late September.
33:42The colors of fall foliage first reach their peak in northern Maine.
33:46Then, over the weeks of October, they march their way south, across New Hampshire, Vermont,
33:52and Massachusetts, and all the way down to the coasts of Connecticut and Rhode Island.
33:58By early November, the peak colors start to fade, just as they arrived, as the leaves
34:05finally fall from the trees.
34:10Scientists are still learning about this amazing natural process.
34:15What they know is that temperature, moisture, and the increasing length of autumn nights
34:21are the three key factors that trigger New England's transformation.
34:26As the nights grow longer, and the temperature falls, the trees stop producing chlorophyll,
34:32which is what makes green leaves green.
34:35The trees seal the veins that carry nutrients up their trunks to their branches and leaves.
34:40The natural sugars already trapped inside produce chemicals known as carotenoids and
34:45anthocyanin that are ultimately what create the leaves' colors.
34:50The darkest reds are usually found on the leaves of maples and oaks, while the golds
34:56and yellows often appear on birches, elms, and poplars.
35:02Millions of tourists from across the U.S. and the world come to experience this stunning
35:07annual event in action.
35:10But on this October day, just outside the New Hampshire town of Hookset, a team of local
35:15utility workers might just have the best view of all.
35:20An aerial lineman is busy at work.
35:22He'll spend almost all day on the skid of this lightweight Hughes 500 helicopter, dropping
35:26down to work on every single utility pole for miles, like a bee moving from flower to flower.
35:38But come November, all the colors around him will disappear.
35:45As New England writer Henry David Thoreau famously wrote in his essay, Autumnal Tints,
35:50October is the month of painted leaves.
35:54Their rich glow now flashes round the world.
35:57October is its sunset sky.
36:00November, the later twilight.
36:04Thoreau's writing famously celebrates the beauty of New England's natural spaces and
36:10sets out to prove their virtues to the humans who he thought too often pass them by.
36:16Much of his thinking came out of an experiment he conducted here at Walden Pond in Concord,
36:22Massachusetts.
36:23Starting in 1845, Thoreau lived for two years on the shore of this lake.
36:29He wanted to experience and write about what it would mean to live a simple life surrounded
36:34by nature.
36:37The book Thoreau wrote, called simply Walden, eventually became a literary classic and made
36:43Thoreau a champion for New England's wild spaces.
36:47Today, some of the wildest of those spaces can be found in Maine, especially along its
36:54rugged coast.
36:56With a seemingly endless number of harbors, inlets, and islands, Maine's shoreline is
37:02actually longer than California's by 51 miles.
37:06It's also famously treacherous, which is why Portland's headlight was built in 1791 when
37:13Maine was still just a part of the state of Massachusetts.
37:17From its coast to its western border, the state of Maine covers a vast inland territory
37:23that's almost the size of all the other New England states combined.
37:30When the morning mist covers the hills on the Maine-New Hampshire border, New England
37:34looks like it must have thousands of years ago.
37:37But if there's one place that captures the beauty of New England's rugged inland territory,
37:44it's this, the Green Mountains of Vermont.
37:48They run down the center of the state and are home to the Green Mountain National Forest,
37:53which ensures the protection of more than 400,000 acres of Vermont land for public use.
38:00When French explorer Samuel de Champlain mapped the area in the 1600s, he named it Vermont,
38:07which means Green Mountain in French.
38:11After the English settled New England, Vermont did not become one of its original colonies.
38:16It became an area of disputed land instead, between the colonies of New Hampshire to the
38:21east and New York to the west.
38:24The governors of New York and New Hampshire both claimed Vermont and its Green Mountains
38:29as their own.
38:31Sometimes they even granted permission to different settlers to farm the same piece of land.
38:37In 1770, the New York Supreme Court ruled that New Hampshire's land grants in Vermont
38:42were invalid.
38:47That's when a settler named Ethan Allen decided to strike back.
38:52A monument to Allen now stands here, in the northern city of Burlington, over his grave.
39:00The reason he's a hero in Vermont even today is because he organized and led a local militia
39:05to defend his fellow settlers' land claims against those of the New Yorkers, and helped
39:10Vermont maintain its independence in the process.
39:14Allen's rowdy militia was known as the Green Mountain Boys, a name still used today by
39:20the Vermont Army and Air National Guard.
39:24The original Green Mountain Boys roamed the countryside, threatening New York settlers
39:29and trying to scare them off the land.
39:31Thanks in part to Allen and his militia, Vermonters remained free.
39:37The Green Mountain Boys also went on to help win one of the most important early battles
39:42of America's Revolutionary War.
39:46In March 1776, the British finally withdrew from Boston, after realizing that they were
39:53outgunned by the American army here, which was led by a general named George Washington.
39:59But over the coming months, the British still tried to come up with a way to contain New
40:02England, where the rebellion of its American colonies had started.
40:06They finally decided on a plan to divide and conquer.
40:12With a surprise attack, they believed they could isolate the New England colonies from
40:16New York and those in the South.
40:18The dividing line would be New York's Hudson River.
40:22So in 1777, a general named John Burgoyne led 8,000 troops south from St. John's in
40:29Canada and down the Hudson, hoping to cut New England off.
40:35America's patriots rallied to stop the advance.
40:38Volunteers from across the region gathered here, at the Fort at No. 4 in Charlestown,
40:43New Hampshire, to prepare to take on the British forces.
40:48Led by John Stark, the ragtag and mostly untrained fighters traveled west, where they were joined
40:55by the Green Mountain Boys and managed to defeat the British troops not far from the
40:59Vermont town of Bennington.
41:02Today, the Battle of Bennington Monument honors their sacrifices and what ended up being a
41:07major turning point in America's Revolutionary War.
41:12It was the beginning of the end of British efforts to divide and rule its rebellious
41:16American colonies.
41:18The American success here, and soon after at the Battle of Saratoga, was what led France
41:22to support American independence and help it win the war.
41:27Vermonters may have played an important role in the nation's battle for independence, but
41:34at the time, Vermont wasn't even recognized as a U.S. state.
41:39It wasn't until March 4, 1791, 14 years after the Battle of Bennington, that Vermont was
41:46finally admitted to the Union.
41:48And statehood was only given after Vermont paid New York State $30,000 to settle the
41:53land claims that the Green Mountain Boys had fought hard to defend.
41:58Vermonters have been a little wary of the federal government ever since.
42:03They have the smallest capital in the nation, Montpelier, which is home to just 8,000 people.
42:09And they have one of America's tiniest state houses.
42:13On the Capitol Dome is a statue of Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture.
42:19She's the perfect symbol for a state whose nearly 1,000 dairy farms produced more than
42:24half of the milk consumed in New England.
42:28Milk that also made Ben and Jerry two of the biggest names in ice cream.
42:37It was here on the shore of Lake Champlain, in the city of Burlington, that Ben Cohen
42:41and Jerry Greenfield opened their very first ice cream parlor in a converted gas station
42:46on this street corner in 1978.
42:50Ben had recently dropped out of college.
42:52Jerry decided that making ice cream was a better option than medical school.
42:57Their ice cream quickly became famous for its wacky names and trademarked chunks, as
43:02well as the company's policy of giving away 7.5% of its pre-tax profits to charity.
43:07The socially conscious brand was an immediate hit.
43:10Today, the company lies here in Waterbury, where thousands of gallons of fresh Vermont
43:15milk and cream arrive every day and are churned into frozen pints of Cherry Garcia, Caramel
43:21Sutra, and Chunky Monkey.
43:24Ben and Jerry turned Vermont milk into a fortune.
43:28In 2000, they sold their company to global food conglomerate Unilever for more than $300
43:34million.
43:35Flying over New England in the fall is a treat for the eyes, especially when it comes time
43:45to harvest one of the nation's oldest crops, cranberries.
43:51Before the harvest, each field, or bog, is flooded with water.
43:55Then, farmers drive machines called beaters back and forth to beat the berries off their
44:01vines.
44:03Inside every cranberry is a tiny pocket of air, which makes it float to the surface and
44:08turn to these temporary palms bright red.
44:12Next, workers have the tough job of corralling their berries so they can actually be collected.
44:19They drag booms across the bogs and then pull them tight, creating stunning patterns and
44:25shapes from above.
44:30Cranberries were first harvested by Native Americans here in Massachusetts long before
44:34the Pilgrims arrived.
44:37Today, Massachusetts is the number two cranberry producer in the nation, after Wisconsin.
44:43These cranberries will be washed and turned into juice, jams, and sauces and shipped out
44:48across the nation just in time for Thanksgiving.
44:54When Native Americans along the New England coast needed to fertilize their crops, they
44:58turned to the sea and used a surprising resource, one that is now a favorite New England delicacy,
45:06the Maine lobster.
45:08In the waters off Bar Harbor, Maine, lobster boats are pretty much everywhere, no matter
45:13what the weather.
45:15They motor from buoy to buoy to pull up the traps that rest on the seafloor below.
45:21There were once so many lobsters in Maine that Native Americans scooped them up and
45:25spread them on their fields because of the rich nutrients in their shells.
45:29In colonial times, lobsters were so plentiful they were fed to prisoners as cheap meat.
45:36But by World War II, the Maine lobster had become a pricey delicacy and has since become
45:41so important to the state's economy that lobster fishing is now a highly regulated industry.
45:48Lobstermen have to measure each lobster they catch.
45:50If the body shell is less than three and a quarter inches, or more than five, they have
45:55to be thrown back.
45:56These regulations help ensure that thousands of Maine fishermen keep their jobs.
46:01And there's still no shortage of lobsters.
46:04In 2014 alone, more than 120 million pounds of lobster were harvested, with close to half
46:10a billion dollars.
46:12When the cold winds of autumn start to howl across New England's coastal waters, fishermen
46:19all along this coast still head out in search of lobster, as well as haddock, scallops,
46:25tuna, and cod.
46:27Today, in Massachusetts, a lot of the fish they catch ends up in one place, the most
46:33profitable commercial fishing port in New England and America, New Bedford.
46:39It's a city that was built on the bounty of the sea in the 19th century.
46:44Before oil was pumped out of the ground in places like California and Texas, oil made
46:49from the fat of whales was what lit the houses, lanterns, and streets of 19th century America.
46:56New Bedford was the biggest whaling port in the nation and is still known today as the
47:00city that lit the world.
47:04But as the whaling industry boomed, so too did the number of brothels and saloons in
47:09New Bedford.
47:10To curb the growing vice, the city's Quaker leaders built a new church called the Siemens
47:15Bethel, or House of God.
47:18Sailors soon stopped in here to pray that they would survive their often treacherous
47:23journeys.
47:24One of those was writer Herman Melville.
47:28His 1841 voyage from New Bedford on a whaling ship called the Acushnet was what inspired
47:33him to write his American classic, Moby Dick.
47:37No other book better captures the thrill and dangers of whaling.
47:42One reason whaling was one of the world's most dangerous jobs was because the whales
47:46were actually chased, harpooned, and then reeled in from small rowboats like these.
47:52A thrashing 50-ton sperm whale could easily smash a boat to pieces and drown everyone
47:57on board.
47:58Today, rowing teams in New Bedford Harbor keep their city's maritime tradition alive
48:04as they prepare for the annual Wicked Whale Boat Challenge that pits crews against each
48:08other in replica whale boats.
48:12These smaller boats were carried on board massive wooden whaling ships, like this one,
48:17the Charles W. Morgan.
48:19There were once nearly 3,000 of these vessels sailing the world.
48:24The Charles W. Morgan is the only one of them that survived.
48:28It's why she was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966 and has recently been rebuilt
48:34and restored from the keel up by a team here at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut.
48:40This historic ship was first launched in 1841.
48:44With crews of roughly 30 men, it then spent 80 years sailing the globe, from New England
48:50to Africa, Australia, and beyond.
48:53On her deck, great ovens turned vats of whale blubber into oil, which was then barreled
48:58for market.
49:03Until the revived Charles W. Morgan sets sail again, the experience of spotting the sails
49:08of a whaling ship on the horizon will have to be left up to the imagination.
49:13But these days, New England's coastal waters may be more alive than they've ever been,
49:17especially over Labor Day weekend.
49:20It's the last chance for many here to get out onto the water before they put their boats
49:24away for the winter.
49:26The modern top-sale schooner, the Lynx, gets its last days of good sailing in before the
49:31season is over.
49:33It's based on the original Lynx, which was one of many private American ships, known
49:38as privateers, that volunteered for service to help fight British blockades of U.S. ports
49:43and preserve American independence during the War of 1812.
49:48Many of these privateers sailed out of the harbor of Salem, just north of Boston.
49:54The rich history of American independence rings out from just about every corner of
49:59New England, from the harbors where its early rebellions flared, to the battlefields where
50:05the sacrifices of a brave few won the liberty of many, to the rocky peaks where freedom
50:11soars today, and the stadiums of its Ivy Leagues, where history was made.
50:17It's much more than the birthplace of America.
50:20It's one of the most distinctive regions of the nation, with a landscape as varied as
50:25any in the lower 48, and rich stories that resonate across every U.S. state.
50:32This is New England.