My wife and I recently received a pair of electronic photo frames as a gift, and decided that we’d put photos of family and friends on one of them, and photos from our travels on the other. In our spare time we love to hit the road and explore. Because we live in the Boston area, we’re stuck up in the corner of the country and it can be a challenge to get out of New England without taking a pretty long trip. Fortunately, there’s plenty to see and do right here in our home state of Massachusetts.
So much, in fact, that I’ve got about 20,000 photos of Massachusetts to pick from. Since I’m choosing photos for our new frame, I figured I might as well share them with you too – everyone out there who loves Massachusetts, or who has never been and wonders what it looks like.
I’ll be going by county, which my friends find strange. Unlike in some other states, people here don’t really think in terms of counties. We generally think in terms of regions like the North Shore, the South Shore, the Cape, or Central Mass. In fact, Massachusetts officially abolished counties as a functioning unit of government a while back. (Even though, out of tradition, we don’t name our state legislative districts by number, but rather call them things like the “Second Essex and Middlesex” or, even more absurd, the “Worcester, Hampden, Hampshire, and Middlesex.”)
Frankly, I find it easier to go by county than to devise coherent dividing lines between regions. And happily, also unlike some other states, Massachusetts only has 14 counties, which makes it manageable. So I’m doing it.
We’ll start in the top right corner of the state, in Essex County, which most locals would think of as the North Shore.
Essex County is home to some three-quarters of a million people, in 34 cities and towns: Amesbury, Andover, Beverly, Boxford, Danvers, Essex, Georgetown, Gloucester, Groveland, Hamilton, Haverhill, Ipswich, Lawrence, Lynn, Lynnfield, Manchester, Marblehead, Merrimac, Methuen, Middleton, Nahant, Newbury, Newburyport, North Andover, Peabody, Rockport, Rowley, Salem, Salisbury, Saugus, Swampscott, Topsfield, Wenham, West Newbury.
The sea is the North Shore’s defining feature. There may be as many boats as people there. Beaches line the rocky coastline from Nahant to Salisbury, while the many captain’s mansions to be found in Salem, Marblehead, and Newburyport testify to the fortunes made in seagoing trade. Literary figures from Nathaniel Hawthorne to John Greenleaf Whittier to John Updike have called the North Shore home, and the area’s natural beauty has inspired artists as well: Gloucester, long one of the nation’s most important fishing ports, also has been home to a significant artist population for many decades.
Essex County also contains major manufacturing centers from the 19th century such as Lynn and Lawrence, a mill city along the same mighty Merrimack River that powered the Lowell mills. The county’s smaller towns run the spectrum from crowded middle-class suburb to posh playground for the wealthy to the kind of sleepy village associated with rural New England.
As home to Eldbridge Gerry, Essex County also has contributed - perhaps not in a good way - to our nation's political history with the very first "Gerry-mander."
The original Gerry-mander shown in an 1812 cartoon
On to the photos. I won’t claim this is exhaustive (and I've badly neglected the inland towns in favor of the coast) but I hope it will give a sense of the area.
Salisbury Beach, in the very northeastern corner of the Commonwealth
Newburyport, a charming small city, is the birthplace of the U.S. Coast Guard. It sits near the mouth of the Merrimack River, the mighty river on which Lawrence, Haverhill, and Lowell, plus Manchester and Concord, New Hampshire, also sit. It is extremely popular with boaters during the season.
State Street is an important commercial artery in Newburyport. The city's center is largely in red brick, while wood predominates in the surrounding residential neighborhoods.
Essex Street in historic Newburyport. The poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, a Maine native, lived in this neighborhood with her mother's family for a time as a child.
Newburyport's High Street contains a large number of well-preserved historic mansions. Although fortunes were made in the Triangle Trade, Newburyport was an early hotbed of abolitionism. William Lloyd Garrison was born there.
The Great Marsh, Newbury. This salt marsh is New England's largest, and is an essential ecosystem popular with birdwatchers.
Ipswich Center has many colonial-era homes, including some that date to the mid-1600s
The Nathaniel Lord house, circa 1741, in Ipswich. Lord was a Harvard-educated lawyer who served as Register of Probate for Essex County, a job that still exists.
Crane's Beach in Ipswich on a not-too-busy summer weekday
The Essex River in Essex. This tidal river is famous for its clams.
Essex, long a shipbuilding center, has many marinas and marine supply stores along the river. The town now is also known for its antiques dealers.
Woodman's of Essex is turning 100 years old in 2014. They claim the founder, "Chubby" Woodman, invented fried clams in 1916. No wonder he was chubby. Woodman's, still extremely popular, was the first to take the clambake on the road, delivering by truck.
The Essex Marsh, behind Woodman's. The river is far narrower on the inland side of Main Street.
The bell at Essex's First Congregational Church was cast by Paul Revere
An American rite of spring: Little League behind Essex's Town Hall and public library
Around the Gloucester Fishermen's Memorial are recorded the names of the thousands who didn't make it home since the 1600s, including the 1991 "Perfect Storm" victims and many since
The view from Rocky Neck, an artists' colony of sorts on a small peninsula in Gloucester Harbor
Downtown Gloucester rises up from the harbor
Our Lady of Good Voyage church in Gloucester. Its design reflects the large Portuguese population in fishing towns along the New England coast.
Most of the population of Gloucester and neighboring Rockport is clustered along the coast, both on the Atlantic and on Ipswich Bay behind. In the center is a strange, desolate area called Dogtown, once settled by farmers but long abandoned. Tenth-generation Gloucester native Roger Babson, a Protestant moralist who founded Babson College, predicted the 1929 crash, and ran for President in 1940 on a platform of bringing back Prohibition, paid stonecutters during the Depression to carve Gilded Age exhortations into about 20 of the massive boulders scattered about Dogtown. The "Babson boulders" make the place even eerier.
Winter waves off Magnolia, Gloucester.
Sledding in Stage Fort Park, Gloucester. My ancestor Roger Conant established the fort in 1623, then founded Salem in 1626.
A village apart in Gloucester, Annisquam sits on a small peninsula on the "back side" of Cape Ann
The inner harbor in Rockport. This pretty town on the tip of Cape Ann is popular with day-trippers. The red shed is called Motif #1 and it's been a favorite subject of painters - and photographers - for a very long time.
Rockport's Main Street, with a view clear through to the water
Rockport's Bearskin Neck often is jammed with visitors in the summer
Rockport's outer harbor
The breakwater, a jetty protecting Rockport's harbor, on a rough winter day. I think it was about 5 degrees and windy on this particular afternoon; Bearksin Neck was NOT jammed.
Some Rockporters still make a living from the sea with these lobster traps, or pots. The lobster trap was invented by an Essex County resident, from Swampscott, just over 200 years ago.
Route 127, which winds along the Cape Ann coastline more or less, passes through Rockport's Pigeon Cove. Many homes in New England have evergreens on the north side or the side facing the sea to block harsh winter winds.
As the name Rockport might suggest, Cape Ann has no shortage of rock. Halibut Point State Park contains a former granite quarry, with the waters of Ipswich Bay and the Atlantic just beyond. It wasn't named for the fish; it was originally called "Haul-about Point" because ships coming from ports like Boston, Salem, or Gloucester had to "haul about" the tip of Cape Ann to reach the place.
Beyond the quarry, Halibut Point State Park contains paths through the brush leading to the rocky, rocky coastline. It's one of my favorite places to spend a few hours.
Infinite blue from Halibut Point State Park, Rockport
The center of Manchester, now officially called Manchester-by-the-Sea. For many years this stretch of the North Shore was known as a bastion of moderate WASP-y Republicanism of the country-club variety.
The North Shore coastline from White's Beach in Manchester. The Boston skyline can be seen peeking out just beyond the promontory.
The City of Beverly is home to some 40,000 people from widely varying tax brackets. Like many Massachusetts cities, it claims many "firsts." Though Marblehead says it founded the U.S. Navy, Beverly has signs calling itself (George) "Washington's Naval Headquaters."
I find this shot of Beverly's coast in blizzard conditions reminiscent of the earliest days of photography
Route 127 is a sleek ribbon stretching through the snow in tony Beverly Farms
A sunny winter day in downtown Salem. Although the witchcraft hysteria mostly took place in Salem Village (now Danvers) to the north, Salem has embraced the hype. The city is packed with tourists each Halloween, and witch logos, witch statues, witch museums, and even actual witches are in evidence here. Outside the touristy downtown, Salem is a city of some wealth and a fair amount of poverty.
More than witchcraft trials, Salem is known as a great seafaring city. Like Beverly, it was founded in 1626 - before Boston. Here the ship Friendship sits at Derby Wharf, Salem Maritime National Park. The Custom House and Hawthorne's House of Seven Gables are nearby.
Salem's broad Chestnut Street is a departure from the city's narrow older streets. Home to many sea captains two centuries ago, it was - and is - the city's fanciest address. On a peaceful snowy day it's almost possible to imagine what it was like before cars came along.
One of Chestnut Street's mansions
The historic center of Marblehead, a town on a thumb-shaped peninsula, contains many narrow streets with 18th-century homes clustered closely together.
Streets follow topography in Marblehead, meaning steep rises, sharp turns, and lots of hidden nooks and crannies.
This yellow building, built in 1727, was Marblehead's town hall for about two centuries
A foggy day on Marblehead Neck. There's a local expression, "Dawn breaks over Marblehead," meaning a person has finally grasped something (e.g. "Wait, you mean 'Lola' was a MAN dressed like a WOMAN?" "Uh, yeah...dawn breaks over Marblehead."). My mother preferred the variant "Fog lifts over Marblehead."
Tough to find for the uninitiated, in a little dead end by the water near the end of the peninsula, but so worth it.
Marblehead's harbor from the end of State Street
My, um, weekend place in Marblehead on a pleasant November day
Winter fun in Seaside Park, Marblehead
Summer relaxation at Marblehead Neck's Chandler Hovey Park. I would love a perfect summer afternoon like this one right about now.
The sea rushes in: heavy waves in the coastal community of Swampscott.
A common sight along the beach in Swampscott
Swampscott's Town Hall, half a block from the water. The town was designed as a garden community of sorts by Frederick Law Olmstead, landscape architect of Central Park and many other projects.
A view of downtown Lynn, with Boston in the distance. This one-time manufacturing powerhouse is home to a growing Spanish-speaking immigrant population, but many longtime residents remain as well.
A Victorian home in Lynn's Highlands neighborhood. The sea is certainly visible from the top windows.
A fairly typical apartment building in central Lynn. Outlying sections of the city have single-family homes, some quite large.
The quiet town of Nahant is situated on a peninsula at the bottom of Essex County. The funding for the Nahant Life Station, no longer active, was procured in 1898 by a town resident, Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. The building is on the causeway into town and was designed to serve the water on either side of the peninsula.
To residents, Saugus is a pleasant suburban town featuring the Saugus Iron Works, an important early industrial site. To many non-residents, however, the name "Saugus" is inseparable from this recently-closed steakhouse. Dining rooms were named for western cities, and patrons would wait to be paged to one: "Numbah two-fahty-foah, Santa Fe." Route 1 in Saugus is losing much of its roadside kitsch: the Hilltop's demise followed the closing of Jin, a Chinese restaurant that, unlike the Hilltop, was on a hilltop...and modeled after the Forbidden City. There's still the massive Kowloon...
A historic home in Peabody, just west of Salem. That's PEA-bi-dee, not pea-BODY.
The Rebecca Nurse homestead in Danvers. She was hung as a witch in 1692 - the "Salem" witch trials mainly took place in "Salem Village," which today is in Danvers, not in the City of Salem.
Pumpkin time in Danvers
The Tea House in Wenham, a pretty town with the highest median income in Essex County.
Hamilton and neighboring towns have many horse farms. Hamilton is home to the Myopia Hunt Club, the first private hunting club in the U.S. Members can partake in such common-folk activities as polo and fox hunting (they don't use a real fox anymore). President Taft, who summered on the Beverly coast during his term, loved to golf at Myopia. There's a metaphor there somewhere.
Spring comes to Topsfield, a sleepy town known for its fair each fall
The Ipswich River, shown here in Middleton, is great for canoeing
Andover's classic American Main Street
The bell tower at Philips Academy, Andover, which graduated Humphrey Bogart and Doctor Spock (not Mr. Spock), and also the Bushes. Nobody's perfect.
Mill buildings near the Merrimack River in Lawrence, once a manufacturing center that saw the Bread & Roses strike in 1912. The city today is about 55% Latino and is one of the poorest communities in Massachusetts, though some of these mill buildings are being brought back to life.
A fairly representative streetscape near downtown Lawrence
A large Victorian split into apartments in Methuen, north of Lawrence on the New Hampshire line
Methuen's striking public library, from the late 19th century
Old-school signage in downtown Haverhill (that's HAY-vrull). A national leader in shoe production a century ago, Haverhill is a large city of 60,000, quite urban in its center but progressively woodsier as you go out. An ancestor of mine was among its founders in 1642.
Hannah Dustin/Duston statue on Haverhill's common. Taken captive by Native Americans in 1698, she escaped and walked home 70 miles to Haverhill. The statue is somewhat controversial today.
A quiet graveyard in East Haverhill
Last look: This bridge from Groveland to Haverhill, about a century old, is now being replaced.
A quiet stretch of the Merrimack River in the town of Merrimac (no "k").
A quaint directional sign in Amesbury's tiny rotary, a baby brother of the large ones found all over Massachusetts. This town was the nation's leading maker of carriages in the 1800s. In recent years its charming downtown, crossed by a river that passes next to mill buildings, has made a comeback.
The Powwow River flows through the center of Amesbury. It was named for nearby Powwow Hill, a spot with a commanding view where Native American chiefs used to meet. Past the bridge the river drops over some decent-sized falls but I don't have any good pictures of that.
This granite marker, nearly 125 years old, sits at the New Hampshire state line as you leave Amesbury on Route 150. Amesbury contains the northernmost point in Massachusetts, very near this spot.
West Newbury is in many ways a classic New England country village.
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So there's a bit of Essex County, Massachusetts. Next up, when I have time: Middlesex County, home to Harvard & MIT, Lexington and Concord, the mills of Lowell and the apple orchards of Stow.