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Trenton
Capital of New Jersey, at the fall line of the Delaware
Trenton sits on the Delaware River at the fall line — the point where the rocky Piedmont drops to the flat coastal plain and the river ceases to be navigable from the sea. That break fixed the site: goods had to transfer around the rapids, and the crossing became strategic, famously the place where Washington crossed the Delaware in 1776. It became the state capital in 1784 and briefly served as U.S. capital that same year.
The fall-line waterpower made Trenton an industrial city — its old slogan, "Trenton Makes, the World Takes," still spans a bridge over the river. Set between Philadelphia and New York in the densely settled Northeast Corridor, it sits where the Piedmont meets the coastal plain, on a river that carries the boundary with Pennsylvania.