New York

The New York City subway runs 24 hours a day, every day of the year, which almost no other large transit system in the world does. That reputation for constant motion suits the nickname “Empire State,” a phrase often traced to George Washington, who described the region as the future seat of a great nation.

Delis and bodegas, small corner stores open early and late, function as neighborhood meeting points, and a sandwich from the counter is part of ordinary daily life. Most of the state is not city at all. Farmland, small towns, and forest cover the land north and west, including the six-million-acre Adirondack Park, the largest protected area in the continental United States.

The Erie Canal, completed in 1825, connected the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes and built the cities along its route. Seneca Falls held the first women’s rights convention in the United States in 1848 and is now home to the National Women’s Hall of Fame.