Boston tourist information

Boston was founded on September 17, 1630, by Puritan colonists from England, on a peninsula called Shawmut by its original Native American inhabitants. The peninsula was connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus, and surrounded by the waters of Massachusetts Bay and the marshes at the mouth of the Charles River. Boston's early European settlers first called the area Trimountaine. They later renamed the town for Boston, England, in Lincolnshire, from which several prominent "pilgrim" colonists emigrated.

Puritans
A majority of Boston's early citizens were Puritans. Massachusetts Bay Colony's original governor, John Winthrop, gave a famous sermon entitled "a City upon a Hill," which captured the idea that Boston had a special covenant with God. (Winthrop also led the signing of the Cambridge Agreement which is regarded as a key founding document of the city.) Puritan ethics molded an extremely stable and well-structured society in Boston. For example, shortly after Boston's settlement, Puritans founded America's first public school, Boston Latin School (1635), and America's first college, Harvard College (1636). Hard work, moral uprightness, and an emphasis on education remain part of Boston's culture.

Taxes and Tee
During the early 1770s, British attempts to exert control on the thirteen colonies, primarily via taxation, prompted Bostonians to initiate the American Revolution. The Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, and several early battles occurred in or near the city, including the Battle of Lexington and Concord, Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Siege of Boston. During this period, Paul Revere made his famous midnight ride.

Riches
After the Revolution, Boston quickly became one of the world's wealthiest international trading ports due to its proximity as the closest American port to Europe — major exports included rum, fish, salt, and tobacco. During this era, descendants of old Boston families became regarded, in the American popular mind, as the nation's social and cultural elites; they were later dubbed the Boston Brahmins.

Manufacturing
In 1822, Boston was chartered as a city. By the mid-1800s, the city's industrial manufacturing overtook international trade in economic importance. Until the early 1900s, Boston remained one of the nation's largest manufacturing centers, and was notable for its garment production, leather goods, and machinery industries. A vast network of small rivers bordering the city and running throughout the surrounding region made for easy shipment of goods and allowed for a proliferation of mills and factories. From the mid-to-late-nineteenth century, Boston flourished culturally — it became renowned for its rarefied literary culture and lavish artistic patronage. It also became a center of the abolitionist movement.

Immigrants
In the 1820s, Boston's ethnic composition began to change dramatically with the first wave of European immigrants. Groups like the Irish and Italians moved into the city and brought with them Roman Catholicism. (This trend of immigration continued throughout the 1800s - most famously when the Potato Famine hit Ireland.) Currently, Catholics make up Boston's largest religious community and since the early 20th century the Irish have played a major role in Boston politics — prominent figures include the Kennedys, Tip O'Neill and John F. Fitzgerald.

Reclamation
Between 1630 and 1890, the city tripled its physical size by land reclamation, specifically by filling in marshes, mud flats, and gaps between wharves along the waterfront, a process Walter Muir Whitehill called "cutting down the hills to fill the coves." The largest reclamation efforts took place during the 1800s. Beginning in 1807, the crown of Beacon Hill was used to fill in a 50-acre (20 ha) mill pond that later became Haymarket Square (just south of today's North Station area). The present-day State House sits atop this shortened Beacon Hill. Reclamation projects in the middle of the century created significant parts of the South End, West End, Financial District, and Chinatown.

A Big Fire
After The Great Boston Fire of 1872, workers used building rubble as landfill along the downtown waterfront. Boston's Back Bay land reclamation project proved dramatic. During the mid-to-late 19th century, workers filled almost 600 acres (2.4 km²) of brackish Charles River marshlands west of the Boston Common with soil brought by rail from the hills of Needham Heights. Boston also annexed the adjacent communities of East Boston, Dorchester, South Boston, Brighton, Allston, Hyde Park, Roxbury, West Roxbury, Jamaica Plain and Charlestown.

Decline then Boom
By the early and mid-20th century, the city was in decline as factories became old and obsolete, and businesses moved out of the region for cheaper labor elsewhere. Boston responded by initiating various urban renewal projects, including the demolition of the old West End neighborhood and the construction of Government Center. In the 1970s, Boston boomed after thirty years of economic downturn, becoming a leader in the mutual fund industry.

Race Relations
Boston already had a reputation for excellent healthcare services. Hospitals such as Massachusetts General Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Brigham and Women's Hospital led the nation in medical innovation and patient care. Universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Boston University attracted many students to the Boston area. Nevertheless, the city experienced conflict starting in 1974 over desegregation busing, which resulted in unrest and violence around public schools throughout the mid-1970s. The unrest served to highlight racial tensions in the city.

Expensive, but Good
Over the past several decades, Boston has experienced a dramatic loss of regional institutions and traditions, which once gave it a very distinct social character. Boston has begun to resemble other parts of the continuous string of Northeast seaboard cities dubbed the BosWash megalopolis. The city faces gentrification issues and exorbitant living costs. Regardless, throughout the past several decades, Boston has once again become a major hub of intellectual, technological, and political ideas.

Logan International Airport, located in the East Boston neighborhood, is the major airport serving Boston. Another airport serving the city and surrounding areas is Hanscom Field in Lexington and Bedford. T. F. Green Airport serving Providence, Rhode Island, and Manchester-Boston Airport in Manchester, New Hampshire, are airports outside Massachusetts which serve as secondary facilities.

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Cows and Feet
Downtown Boston's streets appear as though they were not planned, and are often alleged to have evolved from centuries-old foot and cow paths. Except for the reclaimed Back Bay and part of South Boston, the city has no street grid. Along with several rotaries, roads change names and lose and add lanes seemingly at random. In its March 2006 issue, Bicycling magazine named Boston as one of the worst cities in U.S. for cycling. Boston has been described as a "City of Squares", referring to the tradition of naming the intersections of major thoroughfares after prominent city residents.

Big Dig and the Mass Pike
Boston is the eastern terminus of I-90, also known as the Mass Pike. I-95, which surrounds the city, is locally referred to as Route 128, its historical state route numbering. U.S. Route 1 (also known locally as 'Route 1') and I-93 runs north to south through the city. The elevated Central Artery, which ran through downtown Boston and was constantly prone to heavy traffic, was replaced with an underground tunnel through the Big Dig.

MBTA
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) operated the nation's first underground rapid transit system, which has since been expanded, reaching as far north as Malden, as far south as Braintree, and as far west as Newton. Collectively known as the "T", the MBTA also operates a network of bus lines and water shuttles, and a commuter rail network extending north to the Merrimack River valley, west to Worcester, and south to Providence, Rhode Island.

Amtrak
Amtrak's Northeast Corridor and Chicago lines originate at South Station and stop at Back Bay. Fast Northeast Corridor trains, which service New York City, Washington, D.C., and points in between, also stop at Route 128 Station in the southwestern suburbs of Boston. Meanwhile, Amtrak's Downeaster service to Maine originates at North Station.

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