New York

The Empire States capital is located in Albany, and the state has a land area of 54,475 square miles. New York's highest point is Mt. Marcy at 5,344 feet and its lowest point is at sea level along the Atlantic Coast. Giovanni da Verrazano, an Italian-born navigator sailing for France, discovered New York Bay in 1524. Henry Hudson, an Englishman employed by the Dutch, reached the bay and sailed up the river now bearing his name in 1609, the same year that northern New York was explored and claimed for France by Samuel de Champlain. In 1624 the first permanent Dutch settlement was established at Fort Orange (now Albany). One year later Peter Minuit purchased Manhattan Island from the Indians for trinkets worth about 60 Dutch guilders and founded the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (now New York City), which was surrendered to the English in 1664. It is the birthplace of four U.S. presidents? Martin Van Buren, Millard Fillmore, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Others, such as Presidents Grover Cleveland and Chester A. Arthur, spent most of their lives in the state. New York, named in the 1660s for the duke of York, later James II of England, is called the Empire State.

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