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After spending the fall in the windy city of Chicago, Boomerang Box Jr. has headed east to the state of New Jersey. While in New Jersey, Jr. will join students and teachers of Hartshorn School to celebrate the conclusion of the Great Toy Challenge - and the name of the mystery destination! After visiting Hartshorn School, Jr. will travel around the area, visiting other schools and classrooms.
If you look at the state of New Jersey on a map, it will probably make sense to you that the people of New Jersey are very involved in trade. New Jersey is located on the East Coast of the United States, and has water on three sides: the Atlantic Ocean on its east, the Hudson River on the north and northeast, and the Delaware Bay and Delaware River on the south and southwest. With all that water around, it's a pretty good guess that New Jersey has some major ports! If you made that guess, you'd be right: New Jersey has port facilities along the Hudson River and along the Delaware River and Delaware Bay. New Jersey doesn't just connect to the world by water, though. In fact, New Jersey has a more complex system of railroads and highways than any other state in the USA. Major rail lines pass through the state, as do highways, tunnels, and bridges that connect New Jersey with New York City and other points south and west. It's easy to move people and products in and out of New Jersey. Because of its access to water and, therefore, to trade routes, New Jersey attracted the interest of European traders and explorers many hundreds of years ago. Italian explorers mapped New Jersey's coastline in the 1500s. They were followed in the 1600s by Dutch traders and fur trappers, and in 1655 the Dutch West India Company claimed New Jersey and New York as the colony of New Netherland. Just a decade later, though, the Dutch surrendered their colony to the English, who renamed part of the colony 'New Jersey' in honor of the island of Jersey in the English Channel. One hundred years after that, the citizens of New Jersey - along with their neighbors in the colonies to the north and south - declared themselves to be independent of England and fought the Revolutionary War to win their freedom. Today, New Jersey is a busy crossroads of a state, with farming, manufacturing, offices, and, of course, a lot of trade. What should you expect from a Boomerang Box Jr. visit? |
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