Cultural traits, such as trust and individualism, have been shown to be important determinants of innovation. Cross-country data indicate that these traits help explain variation in innovation rates between countries. Many of these cultural traits have deep roots in a country’s past and are resistant to change. Given the large ethnic diversity of its population, the U.S. provides a unique environment in which we can study how these cultural values affect innovation when they are all operating under the same institutional structure. Using panel data on U.S. county patents and county ancestral origin over the last 130 years, we demonstrate that between 1870 and 2000, U.S. counties with ancestors having a history of technology use and a culture of high trust, high thrift, and high individualism also had higher innovation rates. Counties that move from the 25^th percentile of these cultural scores to being in the 75^th percentile see log patent per capita filings increase between 27%-50%. The fixed effects model is robust to multiple controls, including state-year fixed effects, race, diversity, and local economic conditions. We also use two instruments, shift-in-share and transportation network access, in an instrumental variable (IV) model to address potential time-varying endogeneity. The results are robust to these identification strategies. In terms of mechanisms, we suggest that these histories and cultural traits might affect innovation through a wide variety of channels. To test this, we control for years of education, the most likely mechanism by which culture could affect innovation. The results indicate that even when controlling for this most likely mechanism, these cultural traits remain large and significant. Thus, these cultural and historical traits still appear to be related to innovation rates even when controlling for their most likely and visible mechanisms. Future research is needed to explore and isolate the subtler ways in which these traits could affect innovation.