“The Yankee,” Ralph Waldo Emerson once observed of his fellow New Englanders, “is one who, if he gets his teeth set on a thing, all creation can’t make him let go.” That sentiment only begins to describe the spirit of independent thinking that binds the residents of the six northeastern states. From the Harvard professor researching a novel economic theory to the Vermont farmer stubbornly holding onto his grandfather’s dairy farm, New Englanders don’t like to be told what to do — or for that matter, that it can’t be done.

A stubborn independence was what made the Pilgrims tough it out through New England winters in, one of the first permanent settlements in North America. It’s what made the Minutemen flock to Lexington and Bunker Hill 150 years later to kick off the American Revolution. And today, it’s what has led New Englanders to preserve much of the region’s historic character.

Walking down the gas-lit streets of Beacon Hill in downtown Boston, you can almost hear the clip-clop of Paul Revere’s horse on the cobblestones. Even in the most remote corner of New Hampshire or Vermont, you are likely to find an inn where Washington or some other patriot (allegedly) slept, or a musket piece fired at the Battle of Bunker Hill taking pride of place in a historical museum.

As rich as it is in colonial history, New England’s spirit of independence didn’t end on Independence Day. Shrines to a number of creative freethinkers lie throughout the region—celebrating the likes of Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Robert Frost, and Jack Kerouac.

Then there is the land. Whether it’s a lonely lighthouse on a rocky cliff, a weather-beaten farmhouse surrounded by black-and-white spotted Holsteins, or the quintessential town common with the white-steepled church, this landscape is one of the most recognizable in the world. Driving down back roads there are constant excuses to pull over for a photo op—especially when the region mounts its annual tour-de-force of fall foliage.

There are plenty of unexpected pleasures as well: a museum in Connecticut devoted to big-top king P. T. Barnum; an island artist colony in Maine where electricity is rare and cars are forbidden; an “underwater state park” in Lake Champlain littered with shipwrecks; and a museum full of giant papier-mâché puppets in a converted Vermont farmhouse.

In these and thousands of other ways, New Englanders show off their independent ways of thinking, making a trip to this six-state region inspiring in countless ways.