Certain moments loom larger in history than others – the day the Sons of Liberty hurled chests of tea off Boston’s waterfront, the shock attack on Pearl Harbor that drew the US into World War II, and the founding of the first national park, protecting land for future generations. With hindsight, we can look back and track the turning points that shaped every state.
Read on to discover the most pivotal event in the history of each US state...
This was a seminal moment in the Civil Rights movement. On March 7, 1965, amid tensions over Black voter registration drives, activists gathered in Selma, Alabama, for a peaceful march to state capital Montgomery – but were violently repelled by state troopers.
Another march two days later, led by Martin Luther King Jr, was turned around, but by March 25, a third rally of 25,000 protesters made it to Montgomery, helping make the case for the Voting Rights Act passed in August to protect every citizen’s right to vote.
The remote territory of Alaska was once under Russian control, but life would look very different today if not for a deal brokered between Russian envoy Eduard de Stoeckl and US Secretary of State William H. Seward. On March 30, 1867, they agreed on the sale of Alaska to the United States for $7.2 million, roughly two cents per acre.
Critics at the time derided the purchase as 'Seward’s Folly' or 'Seward’s Icebox', believing it to be a waste of money. However, the discovery of gold in the Klondike region in 1896, followed by other valuable resources like oil, eventually proved the purchase to be a wise investment.
Constructed between 1930 and 1936, the Hoover Dam – the highest concrete arch-gravity dam in the US – was a pivotal employment project during the Great Depression, and one of the largest ever undertaken by the US government.
Then known as Boulder Dam, it employed thousands of workers at a time when jobs were in short supply, constructing a hydroelectric source over the Colorado River. Sadly, around 100 fatalities occurred during its construction.
School desegregation was a hotly contested topic across the country following a 1954 Supreme Court ruling that declared it illegal – but in Little Rock, Arkansas, this nationwide debate was personified by the nine African American students who became the first to attend the otherwise all-white Central High School in 1957.
They had to face a belligerent mob as well as the National Guard just to get to class, and it took nearly four weeks before they were able to start their studies.
The opening of Disneyland in Anaheim was the start of a modern cultural phenomenon that has since spread around the world – but the first day was far from smooth. Food and drink supplies ran out, a plumber’s strike meant water fountains weren’t working, and counterfeit tickets led to overcrowding. The fresh asphalt, laid just the night before, also hadn’t set properly in the heat, causing some visitors’ shoes to stick to the pavement.
Despite the chaos, Walt Disney’s vision and the magic of Disneyland still managed to shine through, and the park quickly became a beloved destination.
The fraught history of relations between Native Americans and settler populations is awash with horrific tales of slaughter, but this attack on the Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples marks the deadliest day in the history of Colorado. After years of tensions, the US Army betrayed a fragile peace treaty on November 29 by launching a sunrise raid that killed more than 230 Native American men, women, and children.
They even returned the next day to commit further atrocities, killing wounded survivors and setting fire to the village. The event triggered widespread outrage across the country, and led to formal investigations that helped spark changes in federal policies toward Native American nations.
Ever wondered why Connecticut is called the Constitution State? In the 1630s, representatives from the towns of Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor wrote and passed a charter of government known as the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut.
It’s regarded as the first written constitution in the western world, establishing that the council’s authority only came from the 'free consent' of its citizens.
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If you’ve ever worn Lycra gym gear, a pair of pantyhose, or even a wetsuit, you’ve got a French chemist who moved to Wilmington, Delaware, to thank. Éleuthère Irénée du Pont established a factory on the banks of the Brandywine River making cheap gunpowder during the Civil War, but the company went on to develop an array of synthetic materials, including Teflon, Nylon, Lycra, and Kevlar, becoming a household name in the process.
It was one small step for man, one giant leap for American ingenuity when the US won the space race. John F. Kennedy’s stirring speech set the target in 1961, pledging to send astronauts to the moon by the end of the decade. On July 16, 1969, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins launched aboard Apollo 11, successfully reaching the moon.
On July 20, Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the lunar surface, followed by Aldrin, while Collins remained in orbit aboard the command module. Their achievement secured a monumental moment in history as the culmination of American ingenuity and determination.
Union General William Tecumseh Sherman delivered a devastating blow to the Confederacy with his infamous 'March to the Sea' during the American Civil War. Starting on November 15, 1864, Sherman led 60,000 troops on a 285-mile march from Atlanta to Savannah, reaching the coast on December 21. The march was designed to break the South’s will to fight by destroying its infrastructure, economy, and morale.
Sherman’s forces targeted railways, factories, and supplies, proving the Confederate government was powerless to protect its people or territory. This strategy not only crippled the South’s ability to wage war but also hastened its surrender, marking a decisive turning point toward the war's end.
The morning of December 7, 1941 dawned like any other in the Pacific islands of Hawaii – but by its end, the United States was thrust toward entry into World War II. At 7.55am local time, the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a surprise attack on the US Naval base at Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu.
The assault aimed to cripple the US Pacific Fleet, and within just a few hours, 188 aircraft were destroyed, 21 ships were damaged or sunk, and 2,403 Americans were killed, with over 1,100 wounded. By midday on December 8, Congress had overwhelmingly approved a declaration of war against Japan.
Natural disasters are nothing new, but this devastating wildfire that hit Idaho was a defining moment in the history of the fledgling US Forest Service. After a year of drought leaving the ground tinder-dry, hundreds of small fires were smoldering across the northern Rockies.
On the night of August 20, hurricane-force winds turned these fires into a massive inferno, spreading flames across more than three million acres of forest. Described by Ranger Edward G Stahl as “truly a veritable red demon from hell,” the fire's devastation cemented the Forest Service’s mission and led to significant changes in federal wildfire management.
When did baseball become America’s pastime? Several states claim a pivotal role in the evolution of the sport – from the first recorded game played by modern rules at Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1846, to the first all-professional team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings.
But the clash between the Cleveland Forest Citys and the Fort Wayne Kekiongas on May 4, 1871 was the first time two pro teams faced off, making Indiana the birthplace of the National Association and home to teams such as the Hoosiers, pictured here in 1888.
The Hawkeye State is famed for its farming heritage, so the first celebration of all things agriculture marked a key milestone. But forget the fairground – in October 1854, six acres of open land in Fairfield was given over to a show of local livestock, with nearly 100 horses, 11 pigs, farming equipment, and an equestrian contest between 10 local ladies that made a star of 13-year-old rider Eliza J Hodges from Iowa City.
It was enough excitement to draw some 10,000 people on foot, horse, or in covered wagons, and numbers grew each year.
We think of Prohibition as a 1920s phenomenon, but temperance talk started much earlier in Kansas, the first state to prohibit the manufacture and sale of alcohol, in 1881. Even so, many saloons kept the liquor flowing, opting to pay a fine or exploiting loopholes and lack of enforcement – despite the efforts of radical campaigner Carry Nation, who would pelt offending establishments with rocks in protest.
Prohibition efforts intensified over the following decades, as seen in events like the destruction of illegal liquor in 1913 (pictured), as public support grew for a nationwide ban.
The longest-running annual sporting event in the US, the Kentucky Derby, began at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, on May 17, 1875. It was the brainchild of Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr., who envisioned a prestigious American horse race to rival those in Europe.
The inaugural 'Run for the Roses' saw African American jockey Oliver Lewis triumph aboard Aristides – in fact, Black jockeys won 15 of the first 28 Derbies, a legacy that has been increasingly recognized and honored in recent years.
It’s hard to imagine doubling the size of a nation almost overnight – yet that’s exactly what happened when President Thomas Jefferson bought 828,000 square miles of land from France in 1803 for the bargain price of $15 million.
Known as the Louisiana Purchase, the vast territory stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border. Soon after, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set off on their 1804 expedition to map the new territory, paving the way for America’s westward expansion.
Maine played a notable role during the American Revolution, a time when territorial boundaries were in flux. The region was the site of the first naval battle of the Revolutionary War in June 1775, near Machias, where American patriots captured the British schooner Margaretta.
Later that year, Benedict Arnold led an ill-fated expedition through the harsh Maine wilderness in an attempt to capture Québec City. Arnold and his troops endured a grueling two-month march before reaching their destination, and on New Year’s Eve, 1775, joined forces with troops led by General Richard Montgomery for the Battle of Québec.
The British repelled the attack, resulting in a decisive British victory and the first major American defeat of the Revolutionary War.
Many icons of America were forged in the heat of battle, and the national anthem is no exception. During the War of 1812, just weeks after a British attempt to burn down the White House, lawyer Francis Scott Key was on board a British warship, just outside of Baltimore, when the British raided Fort McHenry, raining down shells and rockets aplenty.
Yet when dawn broke, he was surprised to see the ‘star-spangled banner’ still flying high over the fortress. Inspired, he penned the poem Defense of Fort M'Henry, which was later set to the melody of a popular British tune, To Anacreon in Heaven. In 1931, the song officially became the national anthem of the United States.
Few events are as pivotal as the protest against British tyranny that lit the fuse of the American Revolution. Seeking to recoup the cost of its colonial wars, the British imposed tariffs on essentials like paper, glass, and tea. But the Sons of Liberty, who opposed 'taxation without representation', made a stand, holding up a huge delivery of British East India Company tea at Griffin’s Wharf in Boston.
Later, they disguised themselves as Native Americans to sneak onto the ships and hurl all 342 chests of tea into the sea, fomenting the appetite for revolution.
When Berry Gordy Jr borrowed $800 to fund his dream of setting up a record label, no one could have guessed how perfectly it would encapsulate the sound of the 1960s. His first tasks were to sign The Matadors (later renamed The Miracles) who soon released their first hit Shop Around, and to buy a studio on Detroit’s Grand Boulevard that was christened ‘Hitsville USA’.
In the decade from 1961 to 1971, Motown scored over one hundred top 10 hits from artists including Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, The Jackson 5, and The Temptations.
British-born Dr William Worrall Mayo arrived in Minnesota in 1863, and soon moved his young family to Rochester after serving there as a surgeon in the Union Army. But in August 1883, when three tornadoes tore through the region leaving many wounded, the growing city’s need for a hospital became apparent.
In response, Dr. Mayo, along with his two sons, collaborated with the Sisters of Saint Francis to establish Saint Mary's Hospital, which officially opened in 1889. Over the following decades, the Mayo Clinic emerged as a world-renowned medical institution and went on to set a new standard for medical advancement, with breakthroughs in cancer, diabetes, and the first surgery using heart-lung bypass in the 1950s.
While the Civil Rights movement was in full swing, Black voter registration remained low across the segregated South, with many states imposing literacy tests or extra conditions to block Black citizens from the voting booth. In 1962, less than 7% of eligible Black voters in Mississippi could actually exercise their right.
So along came the Freedom Summer voter registration drive – but it was met by fierce resistance from the Ku Klux Klan, with three volunteers killed and their burnt-out car later discovered (pictured), causing a national outcry that helped push through the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
With its location as the starting point for the Oregon Trail and a key stop along the Santa Fe Trail, Missouri has always been the gateway to the west – and its role in driving America’s westward expansion was celebrated with the building of The Gateway Arch in St Louis.
The monument, designed by architect Eero Saarinen, broke ground in 1959 and the final pieces were put in place (pictured) six years later.
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Tensions were high between Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne peoples and the settlers migrating to the Great Plains – but it was the discovery of gold that really tipped things over into full-scale war. On June 25, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer led troops in an attack near Little Bighorn River – aka Greasy Grass – but he hadn’t counted on the number of fighters that leaders Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse could call on to defend their land, leading to a humiliating and deadly defeat.
It didn’t end well for the Native American people, however, as within five years, almost all the tribespeople were forced to move to reservations.
The advent of long-distance railroads marked a true turning point in the history of the United States, connecting coast to coast and enabling the 19th-century industrial boom. The Union Pacific Railroad was incorporated on July 1, 1862, with headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, and from there, construction continued westward to join the Central Pacific line from California.
The final ‘golden spike’ joining the two routes was driven into the ground at Promontory, Utah, in 1869, marking the country’s first cross-continental railroad.
Ever wondered how Las Vegas transformed from a small railroad town into America’s playground? The legalization of gambling in Nevada in March 1931 – an effort to help the cash-strapped state recover from the Great Depression – paved the way for Sin City and sister gaming spots such as Reno to bring in high-rollers from across the country, though it had the side effect of attracting organized crime too.
Even now, gambling is still the number-one source of tax income for the state government.
New Hampshire has always had a fiercely independent streak, and this characteristic can be traced back at least as far as the 18th century, when the state became the first of the 13 colonies to establish its own constitution and thus declare independence from British colonial rule, six months before the combined Declaration of Independence.
It was the culmination of a series of smaller protests that even pre-dated the Boston Tea Party, including the Pine Tree Riot against the tax on cutting down native white pine trees.
Few events have had more impact on the modern world than the invention of the incandescent light bulb, and we have Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory to thank for it. “I find out what the world needs. Then I go ahead and try to invent it,” said Edison.
He filed the first patent for a filament bulb in November 1879 – albeit not the first bulb ever made – but it wasn’t until January 1883 when the village of Roselle installed the first network of overhead electrical wires that its true potential could be seen.
The atomic bomb is most closely associated with Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan – but this extreme weapon was developed much closer to home in the deserts of New Mexico. The infamous Manhattan Project was commissioned by the federal government in the early 1940s and resulted in the first atomic bomb detonation at the Trinity test site near Alamogordo on July 16, 1945.
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The Roaring Twenties' era of prosperity came to a screeching halt in 1929 with the Wall Street Crash, plunging many Americans into debt and destitution. A combination of factors led to the collapse of the markets, including overproduction in agriculture causing a fall in demand for grain, a decline in American exports after the imposition of high tariffs, rampant stock market speculation, and struggles in traditional industries.
The crisis culminated on Black Monday, October 28, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell nearly 13%. The next day, Black Tuesday, saw an additional drop of about 12%, erasing billions of dollars in value. By mid-November 1929, the Dow had lost approximately half its value compared to its September peak. The crash marked the beginning of the Great Depression, a devastating global economic downturn that lasted through the 1930s.
A flight time of 12 seconds might not sound like much – but for the world’s first flying machine, that glide was a landmark moment that would change the future of aviation forever. Brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright were determined to prove their ‘heavier-than-air’ flying machine, simply called the Flyer, had potential – and after a series of ups and downs in design and testing, they proved it beyond doubt with the first manned flight across the expanse of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, at 10.35am on December 17, 1903.
Furs were a huge part of the trading economy during the period when early European settlers began to make inroads into Native American lands. From the initial forays from Canadian Pierre Gaultier de Varennes de la Verendrye in 1738, to the first fur-trading post at Pembina in 1801 and the establishment of the Fort Union Trading Post on the Upper Missouri River in 1828 (reconstruction pictured here), North Dakota was at the heart of this thriving economy.
Opposition to the Vietnam War was rife across university campuses, but when President Nixon announced in April 1970 that the war effort would widen to target the Viet Cong in Cambodia, it galvanized protesters. A demonstration at Ohio's Kent State University on May 1 quickly escalated, and amid continuing demonstrations, on May 4 the National Guard fired live rounds into the crowd of college students, killing four people and wounding nine. Two of the dead had nothing to do with the protest.
The forced removal of the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole peoples from their ancestral lands during the 1830s has been dubbed the Trail of Tears, for the destruction it wrought on these age-old societies. With white settlers keen to dominate fertile cotton-growing land, the federal government uprooted them from homes in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, and Florida, and sent them on a perilous journey thousands of miles to ‘Indian Territory’ in Oklahoma.
Disease, malnutrition, and exposure took their toll and many died along the way.
Long after the British had been routed out of the 13 colonies, the Pacific Northwest remained under joint American and British rule after a treaty established at the close of the War of 1812 gave both a say. But as wave after wave of American settlers headed west along the Oregon Trail, a redrawing of boundaries was required.
The British pushed to keep Vancouver Island and President James Polk acquiesced, keen to focus on a brewing war with Mexico. So on August 14, 1848, the Oregon Territory – encompassing present-day Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and parts of Montana and Wyoming, with its capital in Oregon City (pictured) – was born.
“Four score and seven years ago…” – every American school child grows up reciting those famous words at some point, but they stem from a blood-soaked battlefield in the midst of Civil War. On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln stood up to rally his troops on the battlefield at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, instilling patriotic pride and stirring up their desire to triumph not just for their own cause but for the idea of America itself, so that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”
In the wake of the revolution, the newborn nation had to become self-sufficient, and the mills that grew up around Rhode Island were the key. Recent English immigrant Samuel Slater brought with him the know-how to build cotton-spinning machines, and with a prime location on the banks of the Blackstone River, he soon opened the first water-powered textile mill in the US (pictured).
Around it sprang up one of the region's many ‘mill villages’, offering steady work – albeit using child labor that would be unacceptable today – and the textile industry took off.
Trouble between north and south – primarily over the issue of slavery – had been simmering for decades, but with abolitionist Abraham Lincoln in the White House, it finally spilled over into the first shots fired at Fort Sumner (pictured) in Charleston, South Carolina, at 4.30am on April 12. Fort Sumner’s Union commander Major Robert Anderson surrendered within just two days of bombardment, leaving the fort to Confederate leader Pierre G. T. Beauregard.
Mount Rushmore is a pretty big way to pay tribute to presidents past – but did you know that if World War II hadn’t intervened, the colossal carvings were set to be even bigger, going all the way from head to waist? The idea of memorializing past presidents came about in 1923, and work began in 1927 with nearly 400 workers.
Mount Rushmore remains controversial as it is carved into the Black Hills, land sacred to the Lakota Sioux. In response, the Lakota Sioux later commissioned the Crazy Horse Memorial, a massive sculpture still under construction that honors Chief Crazy Horse, a symbol of Native American leadership and resistance.
When Martin Luther King Jr traveled to Memphis, Tennessee in April 1968, it was to lead a march of sanitation workers who were calling for better wages and working conditions. But on April 4, the day after he was photographed here, he stepped out onto the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel and was gunned down. James Earl Ray, aged 40, later pleaded guilty and was given a 99-year prison sentence.
The former Franciscan mission of El Alamo has become a byword for Texan resistance, summing up the state’s independent spirit in the battle cry ‘Remember the Alamo’. With the Mexican army attempting to seize San Antonio, they laid siege to the mission to force the small band of fighters – including James Bowie, William Travis, and Davy Crockett – to surrender.
They lasted 13 days from February 23 to March 6, 1836, but were vastly outnumbered, and the Mexican forces finally overpowered them leaving hardly anyone alive to tell the tale.
“This is the place,” Brigham Young is reported to have said when, on July 24, 1847, he set eyes on a valley near the Great Salt Lake and decided to settle down. The leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (also known as Mormons) had brought 148 of his church followers across the country to escape religious prejudice in the east, becoming the first non-Native Americans to live in the area.
Did you know that Vermont spent 14 years as its own independent nation? Amid quibbles over the border with neighboring New York and the ongoing American Revolution, Vermont decided to establish its own independent territory and declared itself a republic in 1777.
It was initially known as New Connecticut and had its own constitution, currency, postal service, and flag, and even considered allying itself with the British in Canada – until in 1791, it finally became the 14th US state.
Keen to better the Spanish settlements in the Americas, British King James I dispatched some 100 colonists across the Atlantic on three ships – the Discovery, the Godspeed, and the Susan Constant – and on May 14, 1607, they arrived on the shore of Virginia.
Creating a new settlement wasn’t plain sailing, however: they faced famine, disease, and conflict with the Native Americans already living here, to the point that they almost packed up and left – until a new batch of settlers and supplies eased the way while they waited for Virginia’s newest crop, tobacco, to bring in some cash.
Making an occasional mistake at work happens to all of us – but imagine being the woodworker who accidentally left out a pot of glue at Victor Clairmont’s shop in Seattle’s Pontius Building on June 6, 1889. The heated glue burst into flames that leapt from dry wood shavings to pots of turpentine, and the shop was ablaze in no time.
The fire spread to a neighboring liquor store and was quickly out of control, ripping through landmarks including the ornate Frye Opera House, causing $20 million in damage – though it did give Seattle a kick-start to modernize its downtown area.
The raid on Harpers Ferry in October 1859 was a key event leading to the Civil War. Abolitionist John Brown and his band of 21 men attacked the federal arsenal in hopes of sparking a slave uprising. The plan quickly failed, and by October 18, US Marines under Colonel Robert E. Lee had captured those involved.
Brown was tried, convicted of treason, murder, and inciting rebellion, and hanged on December 2, 1859. Before his execution, he predicted that slavery would only end through “much bloodshed” – a prophecy fulfilled 16 months later when the Civil War began in April 1861.
The US is firmly a two-party political system, but it wasn’t always as simple as Democrats vs Republicans. On March 20, 1854, with the Whig Party in decline, some of its former members gathered in the unlikely setting of Ripon, Wisconsin – about 90 minutes northwest of Milwaukee –to establish a new party, and the Republicans were born.
The anti-slavery party quickly gathered support in the North and West, and the election of the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, in 1860 was among the triggers that started the Civil War.
Yellowstone is often billed as the world’s first national park – although Bogd Khan Mountain National Park in Mongolia may have a better claim – but it still signaled a new approach to preserving and protecting America’s wild landscapes. Ulysses S Grant signed the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act on March 1, 1872, establishing it as a reserve protected for future generations.
It was a different story for the Native American population of the area, who had lived in or passed through the area for centuries, as the preservation of this ‘wilderness’ led to the exclusion of Indigenous people from the land.
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