How Fall Colors Turned New England Into a Leaf Peeping Hot Spot

Every autumn, deciduous trees stop producing chlorophyll and their leaves change color before falling off. Vivid foliage displays can be seen across much of the United States, from lemon-colored aspens in the Rocky Mountains to cinnamon-brown bald cypresses in the Southeast. But though opinions vary, New England has become known as the main destination for leaf peepers.

In fact, far more trees turn red and yellow in New England than in other temperate regions worldwide. “New England’s got that sweet spot of red and yellow and orange and brown, which I think is special,” says Stephanie A. Spera, an associate professor of geography at the University of Richmond, who has studied how climate change affects fall foliage in Acadia National Park.

Red maples and sugar maples generate much of the color display, with contributions from beech, birch, sumac, sassafras, ash and other trees. In New England, Spera says, even the low foliage, like blueberry bushes, becomes bright red.

The enjoyment of fall colors is no modern phenomenon. In ancient Greece, Theophrastus, the so-called father of botany, wrote about autumn leaves. And in Japan, the tradition of momijigari, or “red leaves hunting,” dates back at least as far as the eighth century.

In New England, up to 80 percent of land was cleared for farms and houses by the mid-1800s. But as U.S. agricultural production shifted westward, New England’s forests began to regrow.

In 1862, Henry David Thoreau called October the “month of painted leaves” and lamented that the “autumnal change of our woods has not made a deep impression on our own literature yet.” Around the same time, fellow Massachusetts resident Emily Dickinson penned a poem about autumn with the lines: “The Maple wears a gayer scarf / The field a scarlet gown.”

Revering fall’s beauty became increasingly fashionable as the 1800s progressed. In 1877, a hotel in the Catskill Mountains of New York (just outside New England) advertised its “beautiful fall foliage,” and a few years later a Connecticut newspaper reported on the popularity of a train ride to “grand” fall foliage.

Tourism likewise ramped up in Vermont at this time, largely to natural spas, with fall foliage providing an added attraction, says Lisa Chase, director of the Vermont Tourism Research Center at the University of Vermont.

By the 1930s and 1940s, New England’s fall tourism industry was reportedly in full swing, with a Vermont newspaper describing the six-state region as a “mecca” for those seeking colorful foliage. Then, in the mid-1960s, the Bennington Banner, another Vermont newspaper, published the first-known reference to “leaf peepers,” an apparent spinoff of “leaf peekers” that has remained in the popular lexicon ever since.

“I think the term ‘leaf peeper’ was then and continues to be a little controversial,” says Chase says. “It’s not always the most positive term in every sense.”

No matter what they’re called, hordes of tourists now descend via bus, car and cruise ship to such popular spots as the Berkshires of Massachusetts, the Green Mountains of Vermont, the White Mountains of New Hampshire and Acadia in Maine.

Using satellite imagery, as well as old photos, newspapers and visitor reports, Spera and her colleagues found that peak fall foliage in Acadia now comes more than a week later than it did in the 1950s. Peak fall foliage has also become less predictable, Spera says, to the detriment of visitors who often book their trips months in advance.

Trees take their cues from day length, temperature and moisture. To prepare for New England’s harsh winters, they ramp down photosynthesis and reabsorb nutrients from their leaves into their trunks, branches and roots. Brown, yellow and orange pigments, previously masked by the green pigment chlorophyll, begin to shine through. “Those pigments are always in the leaf,” says Alexandra Kosiba, a forest ecophysiologist at the University of Vermont. “They just get exposed.”

By contrast, red pigments, called anthocyanins, aren’t present the whole season. Instead, they’re produced each fall by certain trees, such as sugar maples. Scientists believe the red coloration may act as a kind of plant sunscreen.

Sunny days and cool nights tend to produce the most vibrant color displays. But climate change stresses trees in ways that can affect fall foliage, studies show. For example, New England now has more extreme rainfall events than it used to. Too much autumn rain dulls a tree’s foliage, in part by facilitating fungal diseases, plus storms can knock leaves off before they explode into color. Climate change may also lead to the northward expansion of brownish oak-hickory forests currently prevalent further south.

The fall season "of painted leaves," in Thoreau's words, is a phenomenon that has wowed leaf peepers for centuries. As Spera says, “It’s one of those things you take for granted. It would be nice to have [these] things for future generations.”