Augusta

Augusta is the smallest state capital east of the Mississippi, set on the Kennebec River at the head of tidewater, where oceangoing ships once stopped and river traffic began. A trading post stood here in the 1600s, and the settlement became Maine's capital in 1832, a dozen years after the state split from Massachusetts. The Kennebec, running south to the Atlantic, gave the town its early lumber and shipping economy.

The country around Augusta is the wooded, lake-dotted interior of southern Maine, rolling hills covered in the forest that blankets most of the state. A quiet city built around state government, it sits inland from the busier coast, on a river that once floated logs to the sea.

• Maine
  The Pine Tree State, rugged northeastern frontier located in