Aerial.America.S02E04.Massachusetts
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00:00It's the land of the pilgrims and the perfect storm, Massachusetts.
00:11No other state has played such an important role in America's history.
00:16It was here where a band of settlers defined the aspirations of a nation
00:22and where brave militiamen fought the first battles of the American Revolution.
00:27Aerial Massachusetts explores the tales of two cities,
00:32one hailed as the Cradle of Liberty,
00:35the other where 18 innocent women were condemned to hang.
00:41It was in this small northeastern state
00:44that fans suffered through the longest curse in sport history
00:48and where six men famously set sail but never returned from the sea.
00:54From rolling hills that inspired one of America's most loved writers
00:59to fields that are flooded every year to harvest colorful native berries,
01:05this is Massachusetts, the heart of New England.
01:24Music
01:44Henry David Thoreau once wrote of this wild coast,
01:48A man may stand there and put all of America behind him.
01:54Massachusetts is not actually America's easternmost state.
01:58That honor belongs to Maine.
02:02But anyone on the Cape Cod National Seashore would never know the difference.
02:08This beach and the sea before it are as wild as it gets.
02:14It's a protected wilderness that stretches across 43,000 acres of pristine beaches,
02:20marshes, and ponds.
02:24The first inhabitants of this coast were Native Americans called the Wampanoag.
02:30They fished these waters that were rich with cod, sturgeon, and shellfish.
02:37Music
02:42On November 11, 1620, a ship called the Mayflower rounded the tip of Cape Cod.
02:49On board were 102 passengers, pilgrims, servants, crew, and other laborers,
02:55all joined together to start an English colony in the New World.
03:00They first anchored here in what's now Provincetown Harbor.
03:07Today, Provincetown is a lively seaport.
03:11Its stunning views of the Atlantic have made it a haven for artists.
03:17But the pilgrims saw this coast with a different eye.
03:21One of the Mayflower's passengers, William Bradford,
03:24who went on to become governor of the new colony,
03:27described the coast as a hideous and desolate wilderness.
03:33Ultimately, the pilgrims didn't settle in Provincetown.
03:37They chose instead a more sheltered location just across Cape Cod Bay and named it Plymouth,
03:43after the English port from which they had departed 66 days earlier.
03:49A replica of the Mayflower lies in Plymouth Harbor
03:53It's a glimpse of the cramped conditions on board for these 102 eager souls
03:58who traveled with their animals, tools, and weapons.
04:02Before heading to shore, the pilgrims decided to establish new laws for their colony.
04:08All 41 men aboard stood on the ship's deck and signed a contract that's known as the Mayflower Compact.
04:16That contract is honored here at Plymouth's National Monument to the Forefathers.
04:23On the main pedestal stands the 36-foot tall statue of Faith pointing towards the heavens.
04:29Seated below her are four figures representing the key principles of the Mayflower Compact.
04:35Freedom, morality, law, and education.
04:39These virtues would become the foundation of America's democracy.
04:44The monument's inscription reads,
04:46Erected by a grateful people in remembrance of their labors, sacrifices, and sufferings
04:51for the cause of civil and religious liberty.
04:56The pilgrims' first settlement was built on land belonging to the Wampanoag.
05:01It's possible to imagine life in this early colony here on the Plymouth Plantation,
05:07a painstakingly researched recreation of the colonists' first village.
05:13The pilgrims constructed modest timber-framed houses and raised livestock.
05:18Members of the Wampanoag helped the settlers try to survive,
05:22but during their first winter here more than half of the pilgrims died of diseases,
05:26such as scurvy and pneumonia.
05:29They called this period the Great Sickness.
05:33After a disastrous start, new arrivals from England joined the survivors,
05:38and by 1627, the Plymouth Colony was on the road to prosperity.
05:44But the Wampanoag weren't so lucky.
05:47Their hospitality was rewarded with plague.
05:51European diseases ended up wiping out two-thirds of the tribe.
05:56The story goes that it was here, in 1621, that the pilgrims held the first Thanksgiving.
06:03But long before then, Native Americans had celebrated successful harvests of their own with annual feasts.
06:10The pilgrims' celebration likely didn't happen in late November,
06:14but earlier in the fall, when they harvested their crops of corn, barley, and peas.
06:20It is said that a Wampanoag chief turned up to celebrate, too, with five freshly killed deer and 90 men.
06:28More than 200 years later, in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln officially made Thanksgiving a national holiday.
06:40The pilgrims were the only band of English settlers to seek freedom in Massachusetts.
06:47In 1630, a second group arrived.
06:51They called themselves Puritans, after their wish to purify the English church.
06:58They disembarked in a sheltered harbor to the north,
07:01and started to build what John Winthrop, future governor of the new colony, called a city on a hill,
07:07one that they hoped the world would admire.
07:11That city is now Boston, a metropolis of more than four and a half million people.
07:19Just as it was for the pilgrims, education was a guiding principle for Boston's founders.
07:26Just five years after the Puritans arrived, they established Boston Latin School.
07:32It is now the oldest public school in America, and among the best high schools in the country.
07:37Four presidents of Harvard are among its graduates, along with four governors of Massachusetts,
07:43and four of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, including John Hancock and Samuel Adams.
07:52But it's the institutions of higher learning in and around Boston that are best known.
07:58America's oldest university lies just across the Charles River in Cambridge.
08:04Harvard University dates from 1636, just 15 years after the pilgrims landed.
08:11It was founded when English pastor John Harvard left half his wealth and a private library of 400 books to start a college.
08:19Those 400 books have grown to over 15 million, giving Harvard the largest academic library in the world.
08:29One of Harvard's most famous former students is actor Matt Damon, who was also raised right here in Cambridge.
08:36Damon never graduated from Harvard.
08:39His breakthrough film, Good Will Hunting, was shot on the campus of nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
08:46In the film, Damon plays a math prodigy who worked here on the MIT campus as a janitor.
08:53MIT has been one of the world's premier research institutions ever since it was founded in 1861, and holds nearly a thousand patents.
09:04But one of the greatest inventions of all time was developed by a professor at nearby Boston University, just across the Charles River.
09:14In the 1870s, when Alexander Graham Bell was a professor of vocal physiology, the BU campus was just a fraction of the size it is today.
09:23In his spare time, Bell tinkered at home and in a small rented lab, developing devices for the hearing impaired.
09:33In 1871, he finished work on what he called the electrical speech machine, better known today as the telephone.
09:46With its long tradition of learning, and more than a hundred colleges and universities, Boston has been called the Athens of America.
09:56But one of the best places to study American history is right here on Boston's streets.
10:02A walking path called the Freedom Trail winds past many of the city's most important historic sites.
10:11The trail begins here at Boston Common, America's first public park, and a site that's played many different roles in the city's history.
10:21Back in the 18th and 19th centuries, cattle grazed freely on the green, and it was used for public hangings.
10:32Further down the trail is the Old State House. Now surrounded by modern office buildings, this 1713 structure is Boston's oldest remaining public building.
10:44It was here, on July 18th, 1776, that the Declaration of Independence was read from the building's balcony.
10:52It was the first public reading of the document in the city that had sown the seeds of America's freedom.
11:03A new statehouse was built in 1789, but just three years later, its wooden dome started to leak.
11:11So the city hired a local silversmith named Paul Revere to cover it with copper instead.
11:19The new Massachusetts Statehouse is built on land once owned by John Hancock, Massachusetts' first elected governor.
11:30The Freedom Trail continues to the Old South Meeting House. It was here where Boston's famous Tea Party got started.
11:40Built in 1729, this was at one time Boston's largest building. Colonists often gathered here to voice their frustration with British rule.
11:50On December 16th, 1773, a heated debate erupted inside over the British tax on tea.
11:58Later that night, about 50 men, badly disguised as Native Americans, gathered at Griffin's Wharf in Boston Harbor.
12:07They boarded ships and dumped 350 chests of tea into the water.
12:13This rebellious act was a key event that helped spur the American Revolution.
12:18The British responded by closing the harbor and attempting to suppress the colonial economy.
12:24But political tensions in Boston would soon reach their boiling point.
12:28Boston's Freedom Trail continues north, across the Charles River, to the USS Constitution, the oldest warship in the world that is still on active duty.
12:41At the end of the 18th century, Boston Harbor bustled with cargo ships from around the world.
12:47But pirates off the coast of Africa were a constant threat to these vessels and their crews, just as they can be to freighters today.
12:54Built in 1798 in a Boston shipyard, the Constitution was able to outfight vessels its own size and outrun even larger ones.
13:04In a battle during the War of 1812, British cannonballs bounced off its thick oak hull, giving the Constitution its nickname, Old Ironsides.
13:16Nearby lies a modern ship with a colorful past.
13:20Nearby lies a modern ship with a colorful past.
13:24It wasn't pirates that threatened this destroyer, but kamikaze pilots.
13:32The 2,000-ton USS Cassin Young first set out in combat in 1944.
13:39With its torpedoes, death charges, and anti-aircraft guns, it was built to play an important role in the naval offensive against the Japanese.
13:47On July 30, 1945, a kamikaze pilot crashed into the destroyer near its main smokestack.
13:55An explosion killed 22 men and nearly crippled the vessel.
13:59But the Cassin Young and its crew made it safely back to the U.S.
14:04The ship was finally decommissioned in 1974.
14:07Just as in colonial days, Boston remains a thriving, vibrant city.
14:13Nicknamed a city of neighborhoods, each part of town has its own rich history and flavor.
14:21Today, Boston's Back Bay is one of the city's most distinguished enclaves.
14:27But it had humble beginnings.
14:30The land on which it was built was once a swamp.
14:34When city planners decided to develop the area in the late 19th century,
14:39they mapped out a design for a series of similar brownstones,
14:43which, more than a century later, are some of the most desired houses in town.
14:52Soaring above these row houses is the tallest building in Boston, and in all of New England.
14:57The 60-story John Hancock Tower was built in 1976
15:02with 10,000 panes of blue mirrored glass that have made it a Boston icon.
15:07But once, it was the embarrassment of the city.
15:11Soon after it was built, strong winds ripped out many of the building's 500-pound window panes,
15:17which crashed on the sidewalks below.
15:20Amazingly, no one was injured.
15:22All of the building's glass had to be replaced at a cost of $8 million.
15:32When Irish immigrants arrived in Boston in the early 19th century,
15:36many settled here in a South Boston working-class neighborhood known as Southie.
15:41Jutting out into Dorchester Bay, it was also the heart of the city's shipping industry.
15:46By the 1950s, it had fallen on hard times.
15:50But since then, it's had a renaissance.
15:53Thanks to the neighborhood's proximity to downtown,
15:56its old three-story wooden houses have become highly sought after.
16:01And the movies Good Will Hunting and The Departed, which were shot here,
16:06have helped put Southie on the map.
16:08Guarding the harbor is Southie's Castle Island.
16:12There's been a fort on this site since 1634.
16:16Today, Fort Independence still stands.
16:20Built between 1834 and 1851, it's the eighth fort to occupy this spot.
16:26Although forts here were used during the Second World War,
16:29they were never used for military purposes.
16:31Built between 1834 and 1851, it's the eighth fort to occupy this spot.
16:36Although forts here were used during the Civil War and both World Wars,
16:40they saw little action.
16:42And Fort Independence is best remembered today for its literary association.
16:48A local legend says that in 1817, after a duel,
16:52a lieutenant here named Gustavus Drane was locked up in a vault to perish.
16:57Ten years later, Edgar Allan Poe was stationed at the fort.
17:02Locals like to think that Drane's story was the inspiration
17:05for Poe's strikingly similar tale, The Cask of Amontillado.
17:16With its narrow streets and elegant federal-style homes,
17:20Beacon Hill is one of Boston's oldest neighborhoods.
17:23It also has some cozy pubs.
17:26But there's only one where everybody knows your name.
17:30This may be the most famous bar in all of Boston, the Bull & Finch Pub.
17:36Thanks to the television show Cheers, tourists have been flocking here for years.
17:41Unfortunately, they won't find any of the show's regulars inside.
17:45The bar's interior was a Hollywood fabrication.
17:48Across town, there's another place with bright lights and larger-than-life characters.
17:53But this time, they're real.
17:58Fenway Park is home to the Boston Red Sox.
18:02Built in 1912, it's the oldest Major League Stadium in America still in use.
18:07The Red Sox were among the most successful teams in baseball.
18:12Then, in 1919, the team sold their star player,
18:15Babe Ruth, nicknamed the Bambino, to the New York Yankees.
18:20The Sox then entered the longest shutout in professional baseball,
18:2486 years without a World Series win.
18:28The losing streak was known as the Curse of the Bambino.
18:33The curse wasn't removed until 2004,
18:36when the Red Sox finally won the World Series.
18:39The Massachusetts Turnpike runs right next to Fenway Park,
18:43on its way into the center of the city.
18:46For decades, Boston's transportation network was plagued by poor infrastructure.
18:52Two major state highways ran right through downtown,
18:56creating some of the worst traffic congestion in the country.
19:00To solve these problems, the city spent 30 years and more than 15 billion dollars
19:05to construct bridges and an underground eight-lane tunnel.
19:10Called the Big Dig,
19:13it was one of the largest and most technologically challenging highway projects in U.S. history.
19:22But the project was stricken with billion-dollar overruns,
19:26leaks, death, and criminal arrests.
19:29When it was finally completed,
19:31millions in Boston breathed a sigh of relief.
19:37One of the Big Dig's most visible projects
19:40is the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge,
19:43one of the widest cable-stayed bridges in the world.
19:47Its cables appear as a giant ship under sail,
19:51paying tribute to Boston's maritime past.
19:54The bridge opened in 2002 with an extraordinary publicity stunt.
19:59Fourteen elephants from the Ringling Brothers' Barnum & Bailey Circus
20:03crossed the span to demonstrate its strength,
20:06a test similar to one done a century earlier on New York's Brooklyn Bridge.
20:14The bridge leads to Charlestown,
20:17site of the oldest and most famous bridge in the world.
20:21The bridge leads to Charlestown,
20:24site of the Old North Church,
20:26the oldest standing church in Boston
20:28and one of America's most historic sites.
20:31In 1775, the British decided to confiscate militia weapons
20:36in the town of Concord, outside of Boston.
20:41Paul Revere had made plans to use this church tower
20:44to signal to others how the British planned to attack.
20:47One lantern meant they would be leaving Boston by land,
20:51two if by sea.
20:54On the evening of April 18th,
20:56Revere ordered the signalman to light two lanterns,
20:59then he left to spread the word himself on his legendary midnight ride.
21:07As news of the impending attack spread,
21:10farmers grabbed their muskets and prepared for battle.
21:13The first place they would have to make a stand was here, at Lexington.
21:18This statue celebrates the man who commanded Lexington's militia,
21:22John Parker.
21:26Parker's militia assembled here, on Lexington Green.
21:30But when Parker realized that he and his men were outnumbered,
21:33he ordered them to retreat.
21:35Then, a shot rang out,
21:38igniting the first battle of the American Revolution.
21:40To this day, no one knows for sure which side pulled the trigger.
21:45When the fighting was over,
21:47eight rebels were dead, and the Redcoats were marching on.
21:51By the time they reached Concord,
21:53a second force of militiamen was waiting here, on the North Bridge.
21:57A lengthy battle ensued,
21:59during which the colonists chased the Redcoats all the way back to Boston,
22:03and inflicted heavy damage.
22:06By the time the Redcoats reached Central Boston,
22:08one in six was killed, wounded, or missing.
22:14So pivotal was the colonists' victory,
22:17that Ralph Waldo Emerson immortalized this bridge
22:20in his famous poem, Conquered Him.
22:23By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
22:26their flag to April's breeze unfurled.
22:29Here, once the embattled farmers stood,
22:32and fired the shot heard round the world.
22:39Emerson knew Concord well.
22:42He lived here, directly across the street
22:45from two other literary giants of the 19th century.
22:51This quiet house, known as the Wayside,
22:54was the childhood home of Louisa May Alcott.
22:59Her life here partly inspired scenes in her American classic, Little Women.
23:04The Alcotts later sold the Wayside to Nathaniel Hawthorne,
23:08who wrote his final books here.
23:11Alcott, Hawthorne, and Emerson
23:14were all buried in Concord's Sleepy Hollow Cemetery,
23:18along with their friend and colleague, Henry David Thoreau.
23:25The Alcott family, who lived here,
23:27and their friend and colleague, Henry David Thoreau.
23:37In 1845, the 28-year-old Thoreau
23:40built himself a one-room cabin here in Concord,
23:43right next to Walden Pond.
23:46Thoreau lived and wrote here for two years,
23:49two months, and two days.
23:52His book, On Walden Pond, was an indictment of materialism,
23:55a guide to fulfillment, and an ode to nature.
24:00Thoreau wrote,
24:03I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.
24:08By the 1990s, the woods surrounding Walden Pond
24:11were threatened by development.
24:14But Don Henley, frontman for the rock band The Eagles,
24:17stepped in and formed the Walden Woods Project,
24:20which is actively protecting the pond
24:22and honors Thoreau's legacy of conservation
24:25and social responsibility.
24:28Two centuries before Thoreau,
24:31and just 30 miles to the east,
24:34a band of Puritan settlers chose the mouth of the Namkeg River
24:37as their sheltered land.
24:40They named it Salem, a distortion of shalom,
24:43the Hebrew word for peace.
24:46A statue of Roger Conant, the town's founder,
24:49stands on historic Salem Common.
24:52Today, the streets of Salem appear peaceful, quiet.
24:56Children celebrate Halloween in a local park.
25:00But more than three centuries ago,
25:03Salem was anything but peaceful.
25:08At the end of the 17th century,
25:11the Massachusetts town of Salem was in a state of heightened anxiety.
25:15The threat of Indian attacks,
25:18internal religious dissent,
25:21a smallpox epidemic,
25:24and a strong belief in the devil
25:27caused fear and distrust to spread like wildfire
25:30throughout this Puritan community.
25:33Salem's popular Witch Museum
25:36tells the terrifying events that followed.
25:39It all happened when two young girls in the village
25:42became ill with violent fits.
25:45They were bewitched,
25:48and the girls accused three local women of witchcraft.
25:51Soon, hysteria took over.
25:54160 men and women were accused of being witches
25:58and brought to trial.
26:01Known today as the Witch House,
26:04this was once home of Judge Jonathan Corwin,
26:07the local magistrate who investigated the claims of witchcraft
26:10and ultimately sent 19 innocent men and women to their deaths.
26:1318 of them were hanged on a nearby hill.
26:18Salem's witch trials mark one of the darkest periods in American history.
26:25By the 18th century,
26:28Salem had grown into one of the most important seaports in America.
26:31The city grew rich on the codfish trade with the West Indies in Europe.
26:37Much of its wealth passed through the Salem Customs House,
26:40where taxes were collected on imported cargo.
26:44It was here where American author Nathaniel Hawthorne
26:48had a three-year stint as a customs official,
26:51work which inspired part of his American classic,
26:54The Scarlet Letter.
26:57While ship owners in Salem grew rich from international trade,
27:01life for New England sailors came with great risk,
27:06and still does today.
27:10No other town has known the dangers of the sea like nearby Gloucester.
27:16It was from this bustling commercial fishing port
27:19on September 20th, 1991,
27:22that the 72-foot Andrea Gale and her six-man crew
27:25set off to fish the Outer Banks.
27:28They were 180 miles off the coast and on their way home,
27:31when they were hit by one of the worst storms on record.
27:35The ship and its crew were lost at sea,
27:39but their story was captured in the best-selling book and movie,
27:43The Perfect Storm.
27:49And they weren't Gloucester's first lost sailors.
27:53On the city's seafront stands the Man at the Wheel statue,
27:57built in 1923 to commemorate 300 years of the Great Depression.
28:01The 8-foot tall statue includes the names of hundreds of others
28:05who set sail from here, but never returned.
28:13Gloucester's fishermen follow in a tradition
28:16that dates back to the 18th century,
28:19when the city was crowned the shipbuilding capital of New England.
28:23The first American schooner was reportedly built here in 1713.
28:27With their multiple masts,
28:30abilities to reach high speeds and sail windward,
28:33schooners were perfect vessels for fishing and privateering.
28:37Today, a 65-foot modern schooner can be chartered from Gloucester Harbor.
28:42But Thomas E. Lannan was the brainchild of a man
28:46who'd heard stories of his grandfather's exploits at sea.
28:49The schooner he now owns is modeled on boats
28:52from the turn of the 20th century.
28:54And was built by a designer whose family
28:57has been in the shipbuilding business since 1650.
29:03But Massachusetts wasn't built on shipbuilding alone.
29:07The old mill town of Lowell was named for an industrial pioneer
29:12who helped give birth to Massachusetts and America's Industrial Age.
29:17Lowell lies on the Merrimack River,
29:20where it flows across the Pawtucket River.
29:22In the days before steam engines,
29:25falling water was the best means to power a mill.
29:29In 1810, a man named Francis Lowell returned from a trip to Britain
29:34armed with details of the workings of the power loom,
29:38a cornerstone of England's industrial success.
29:41Lowell and his partners then built a mill of their own
29:45to turn cotton into thread and thread into cloth,
29:49all under one roof.
29:53After his death, the new mill town of Lowell was established
29:57and named in his honor.
30:00Here, nearly six miles of canals powered 40 mills
30:05that turned out 50,000 miles of cloth a year.
30:09These mills, and others throughout New England,
30:13were the birth of mass production in America.
30:16Being able to produce cloth from scratch in a single factory
30:19was so revolutionary at the time,
30:22many, including Andrew Jackson, Davy Crockett, and Charles Dickens,
30:26came to marvel at Lowell's mills.
30:33To the west, in Amherst, lies a house nestled in trees.
30:38This was the birthplace of Emily Dickinson,
30:42one of America's most loved poets.
30:45She spent much of her life here at a house known as the Homestead.
30:49Its secluded location was a welcome escape
30:53for the intensely private Dickinson.
30:56She had her own writing room on the second floor,
31:00where she composed more than 1,100 poems,
31:03all by the time she was just 35.
31:06But little of her work was published during her lifetime.
31:10The few poems that appeared in newspapers
31:13were printed anonymously and without her permission.
31:20Just 25 miles south of Amherst lies Springfield,
31:25the birthplace of one of the greatest sports of all time,
31:29honored here at the Basketball Hall of Fame.
31:34In 1891, James Naismith, a sports teacher,
31:39set out to create a diversion for his unruly students
31:42during a long New England winter.
31:44He came up with the idea of shooting a soccer ball
31:47at a peach basket positioned 10 feet off the ground.
31:50The first formal rules for basketball
31:53were created the next year.
31:56But it was a full decade before a real game-changer was introduced.
32:00Open-bottomed baskets,
32:02so that players didn't have to manually retrieve the ball.
32:08Since the days of Naismith's early basketball games,
32:10Springfield has become the third largest city in Massachusetts.
32:15But just 40 miles west of here
32:18is one of the most stunning natural landscapes in New England.
32:22These are the rolling hills and forests of the Berkshires.
32:27During the 19th century,
32:29these hills were stripped of trees
32:31to feed the factories and towns of industrial Massachusetts.
32:34But they've bounced back.
32:36Thousands come here every year
32:38to witness one of New England's greatest events,
32:41Fall Foliage.
32:44The towns and villages of the Berkshires
32:47can seem to disappear under a blanket of leaves.
32:51That's because there are more than 15,000 acres
32:54of protected forests here.
32:57At the heart of the Berkshires lies Stockbridge.
33:01It was originally named Stockbridge
33:04It was originally settled in the mid-1730s
33:07as a mission town for the Stockbridge Indian tribe,
33:10who had been forced out of their homeland in New York State.
33:13At the center of town is the old Red Lion Inn,
33:17which has operated continuously since 1733.
33:21Stockbridge is also home to a very unusual burial site.
33:26Theodore Sedgwick, a state Supreme Court justice,
33:29created a private burial plot here for himself
33:31and his family.
33:34It's known locally as the Sedgwick Pie.
33:38Unlike most graves which face the east,
33:41these are arranged in a concentric circle.
33:44Legend has it that Sedgwick wanted to be sure
33:47that on Judgment Day, when the family rose from their graves,
33:51they would all be facing each other.
33:56Less than 10 miles north of Stockbridge lies Lennox.
33:59Once home to the first woman ever to receive
34:02a Pulitzer Prize for literature.
34:05In 1902, Edith Wharton designed and built
34:09an elaborate estate here, known as The Mount.
34:12The house was her chance to express the ideas
34:15she outlined in the best-selling book,
34:17The Decoration of Houses.
34:20She wrote of her new house,
34:22On a slope overlooking the dark waters
34:25and densely wooded shores of Laurel Lake,
34:26we built a spacious and dignified house,
34:29to which we gave the name of my great-grandfather's place,
34:33The Mount.
34:35Wharton also personally designed the estate's elaborate grounds,
34:39including a formal walled Italian garden.
34:42It is one of just a few national historic landmarks
34:45that are dedicated to women.
34:48The Berkshire's forests and hills head north,
34:51right up to the base of the state's highest peak.
34:55Mount Greylock reaches almost 3,500 feet
34:59and is surrounded by the Mount Greylock State Reservation.
35:03Created in 1898, it was the first park
35:07in the state of Massachusetts,
35:09and in 1932, it became the first state park
35:13in the state of Massachusetts.
35:15And in 1932, the peak was crowned
35:19by the Massachusetts Veterans War Memorial.
35:23Built to resemble a lighthouse,
35:26its beacon is powerful enough to be seen 70 miles away.
35:30There is no shortage of real lighthouses in Massachusetts.
35:34Sixty-one of them are perched
35:36along the state's 1,500 miles of coastline.
35:46One of the oldest, Gay Headlight,
35:49lies on one of Massachusetts' great islands.
35:52Martha's Vineyard is located just off Cape Cod.
35:55This island was once called Nopie,
35:58meaning amid the water, by Wampanoag Native Americans
36:02who have lived here for more than 10,000 years.
36:06The Gay Headlight stands guard
36:08over one of the most breathtaking sights in the state,
36:11the Aquinnah Cliffs.
36:12Each colorful stratum in the 150 feet of sediment
36:16tells an ancient tale from a hundred million years ago.
36:26Nestled into these layers of sand, clay, and gravel
36:30are the fossilized remains of ancient sharks,
36:33wild horses, and even whale bones dating back millennia.
36:42Martha's Vineyard's beaches and seaside cottages
36:46have drawn summer residents here for centuries.
36:49Ferries, which started running here as early as 1818,
36:53now bring more than 100,000 visitors every summer.
36:57Over the years,
36:59they've included many prominent artists and intellectuals,
37:02such as Carly Simon, James Taylor, James Cagney,
37:05and Martin Luther King, Jr.
37:08The island's isolation
37:09has made it the chosen vacation spot for presidents, too,
37:13including Obama and Clinton.
37:21But Martha's Vineyard has also known great tragedy.
37:25On July 16, 1999,
37:28John F. Kennedy, Jr. was on his way here
37:31when he lost control of his single-engine plane
37:34and crashed into the Atlantic.
37:36He, his wife Carolyn, and his sister-in-law
37:40all died in the crash.
37:42Their ashes were spread in the waters off the island's coast.
37:51Martha's Vineyard's coastline stretches almost 124 miles,
37:56covering two islands,
37:58one known locally as The Vineyard
38:00and the smaller Chappaquiddick Island,
38:02just off the main island's eastern tip.
38:06Many know the Vineyard's coastline from the movie Jaws.
38:12During filming,
38:14director Steven Spielberg paid local kids $5 a day
38:17to run screaming from the water
38:19whenever the mechanical shark would approach the island's shore.
38:24Although Jaws turned out to be a blockbuster hit
38:27in the summer of 1999,
38:29it was a hit in the summer of 2000.
38:31Although Jaws turned out to be a blockbuster hit
38:34in the summer of 1975,
38:36there actually has not been a great white shark attack
38:39in Massachusetts waters since 1936.
38:46But there is reason for beachgoers to be wary.
38:49Nearby is the hunting ground of great whites.
38:53Massachusetts' Muskeget Island is a tiny piece of land.
38:57Low sandbars and shoals make it dangerous for most boats
39:01but provide a perfect breeding ground for gray seals.
39:06As many as 2,000 seal pups are born here every year
39:10and the pups are perfect food for great white sharks.
39:15Once great whites reach 1,000 pounds,
39:18they abandon their fish diet and start hunting seals.
39:25Less than 10 miles from Muskeget's shores
39:28lies the second of Massachusetts' Great Islands,
39:31Nantucket.
39:33It's the only place in North America
39:35to have the same name for a town, county and island.
39:39The name Nantucket is thought to come from a Native American word
39:43meaning faraway island.
39:45In the late 17th century,
39:47Nantucket's unexploited waters were overflowing with whales.
39:51Legend has it that one of the island's settlers
39:54looked out upon the whale-filled waters and remarked,
39:57this is a green field in which we will go to prosper.
40:02Native American tribes had long been harvesting beached whales
40:05well before Europeans arrived.
40:09But in 1690, the island's settlers hired a Cape Cod man
40:13named Ichabod Paddock to teach them how to whale.
40:18By the late 19th century,
40:20Nantucket was the third largest city in Massachusetts
40:23with a population of 10,000.
40:27As the whaling industry expanded in the 19th century,
40:29larger whaling ships were needed to voyage through faraway waters.
40:33And this Massachusetts harbor town, New Bedford,
40:36was perfectly poised to accommodate the industry's growth.
40:41The town, conveniently located in the steady winds of Buzzards Bay,
40:45had the infrastructure for a successful port,
40:48shipyards, a large workforce
40:50and access to New York and Boston via railroads.
40:54By 1823, the small town sent out more whaling ships
40:59than Nantucket.
41:01Eventually, New Bedford had become the greatest whaling city
41:05of the 19th century.
41:07During New Bedford's glory days,
41:09a young 21-year-old came to the prosperous city
41:12looking for work on a whale ship.
41:14His name was Herman Melville,
41:17and his experiences inspire the literary classic,
41:20Moby Dick.
41:22But before leaving on his first long, dangerous voyage,
41:25Melville attended services in this chapel,
41:27known as the Seaman's Bethel.
41:30For three years, he sailed the South Seas
41:33aboard the vessel, Acushnet.
41:35He published his lengthy novel in 1851,
41:38but it received poor reviews.
41:41And 40 years later, he died in obscurity.
41:45But within three decades after his death,
41:48Moby Dick was considered a masterpiece.
41:51By the end of the 1850s,
41:53the whaling industry was in decline.
41:55New Bedford sent out its last whaling ship in 1925.
42:07In 1850, the average length of a whaling voyage
42:11was 42 months.
42:13This long time at sea brought about many diseases.
42:17One of the worst was scurvy.
42:21To ward off this potentially deadly disease,
42:23whaling ships carried a Massachusetts staple,
42:26the cranberry, which is rich with vitamin C.
42:30They are still grown right here on Cape Cod.
42:37There is nothing like watching a cranberry harvest
42:40from the air.
42:43This red fruit grows on small shrubs,
42:46but they're not harvested like most nuts or berries.
42:49Every autumn, the cranberry fields are flooded.
42:56Then farmers use machines called beaters
42:59to loosen the berries.
43:01They need to be careful not to harm the bushes themselves
43:04and endanger the next year's crop.
43:09Once the cranberries are floating on the surface,
43:12they are gathered with a boom and then processed.
43:15A single beam of cranberry juice
43:17can collect cranberries from one entire field,
43:20creating a unique palette of colors and shapes
43:23that are best seen from high above.
43:28Today, Massachusetts produces
43:31one-third of all cranberries grown in America,
43:34second only to Wisconsin.
43:37It is the state's official berry.
43:48Alongside Cape Cod's cranberry bogs
43:51is the town of Hyannisport.
43:55In 1926, Joseph Kennedy Sr.
43:58rented a clabbered cottage here
44:00and liked it so much, he bought the place two years later.
44:05Over the next three decades,
44:07his sons, John and Robert,
44:09purchased houses on the same block.
44:13Each Kennedy home is a fine example
44:15of typical Cape Cod architecture,
44:18simple white-framed clabbered houses
44:20with central fireplaces.
44:23Many view this compound
44:25as the holy site of democratic politics.
44:28It was here where the Kennedy family watched
44:31JFK clinch the presidential victory over Nixon in 1960.
44:37It was also where John's brother, Ted,
44:40spent his final days before dying of a brain tumor in 2009.
44:45He had served as a Massachusetts senator for 47 years.
44:53One of the family's greatest legacies
44:56is the Cape Cod National Seashore,
44:59created by President John F. Kennedy in 1961
45:02to preserve the land of the pilgrims
45:04and the native inhabitants
45:06who first lived along these shores.
45:10This is Massachusetts,
45:12the birthplace of America's independence
45:15and the heart of New England.
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