Thirteen original colonies are represented in the founding story commemorated by America250.
The colonies were British settlements along the Atlantic coast of North America: New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. They declared independence together in 1776.
These colonies were not identical. They differed in geography, economies, religious traditions, settlement patterns, and relationships with Indigenous peoples and enslaved people. Their representatives nevertheless joined in revolutionary resistance and created a new political union.
The thirteen-colony count is often confused with later totals. The United States eventually expanded through new states and territories, while the original colonies became the first thirteen states. The number also appears symbolically in the national flag, whose original design had thirteen stripes and thirteen stars.