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Hours: Tuesday through Sunday and Monday holidays
8:30am - 4:00pm

The new visitor center overlooking the Merrimack River includes second-floor observation areas—one indoors and one outdoors—a conference center, a guest services area, and interpretive displays.

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Thursday-Saturday 11-4 and Sunday 12-4

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Open May through November. Tuesday - Friday, 10 am to 4 pm, Saturday - 12 pm to 4 pm. Closed Sundays, Mondays, and holidays.

Take a trip into Newburyport's rich history and prosperous shipbuilding era inside this elegant federalist period mansion. A guided tour of the house's graceful rooms showcases fine collections of silver, furniture, portraits, clocks, needlework and more from New England, the Orient, and far away ports. On the grounds, visitors will find a stunning 19th century garden, an herb garden, fruit trees, a summer house, cobbled yard and carriage house.

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Hours: Tuesday through Sunday and Monday holidays
8:30am - 4:00pm

The new visitor center overlooking the Merrimack River includes second-floor observation areas—one indoors and one outdoors—a conference center, a guest services area, and interpretive displays.

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8 am-430 pm

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Private Heritage Tours available with advanced reservations. Please call 617-227-3956, June 1 through October 15.

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Open year-round, daily, sunrise to sunset Admission: Free to all

This unusual half-upland, half-marine landscape makes for a rich and diverse ecosystem.

The upland consists of second-growth forest and fields that support ground-nesting birds and serve as hunting grounds for hawks and owls. Salt meadow grass, cordgrass, seaside goldenrod, and sea lavender thrive in the tidal salt marsh. Estuarine invertebrates, such as mud snails, green crabs, and ribbed mussels, live in the tidal creeks and provide food for wading birds, such as egrets and great blue herons.

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Refuge headquarters is located at 6 Plum Island Turnpike (Rolfe’s Lane), Newburyport , MA, right before the bridge to Plum Island. It is directly across the road from the Massachusetts Audubon building. Currently, the exhibit area is not completed, but the administrative office is open Monday through Friday from 8 am-430 pm. For more information, you may call 978/465-5753.

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June 1 - October 15, Friday - Sunday 11-5 Admission: $5/adults, $18/families, $4/children, Free for Historic New England members

To stand at the head of Little's Lane and look toward the Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm is to look into another world. The ancient trees and clustered buildings convey a sense of great age and the passing of countless seasons of planting and harvest. When the house was built sometime during the last quarter of the 17th Century, it was intended to impress the visitor, and it still does today. Its imposing size and unusual building materials, stone and brick, command respect and curiosity.

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Hours: Please call for appointment.
Admission: $4/adults

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Open June to October, the first Saturday of the month, 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. Tours on the hour. Admission: $5/adults, $4/seniors, $2.50/students, children.

The Tristram Coffin House is the oldest structure in the Newbury Historic District. Built in 1654 by one of Newbury's first settlers, Tristram Coffin, the House represents one of the outstanding examples of First Period architecture in New England.

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Beauport, the Sleeper-McCann House, a property of Historic New England, is the work of designer Henry Davis Sleeper and architect Halfdan M. Hanson. The house contains collections from the colonial era, and is arranged by color and light. Construction on the house began in 1907 and lasted 27 years. Sleeper became well known for his unique designs, and subsequently designed home for several celebrities, including Joan Crawford and Henry Francis du Pont. Charles and Helena McCann bought Beauport, and added their Chinese porcelain objects to the collections. The McCann family later donated Beauport to Historic New England as a museum.

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Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. and Sunday from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. The Museum is closed on Mondays, major holidays and for the month of February.

The Cape Ann Historical Museum exhibits the nation's largest collection of paintings and drawings by Fitz Hugh Lane (1804-1865). A native of Gloucester, Lane is now recognized as one of America's most important 19th century artists. The Museum celebrates the area's proud fishing and maritime heritage with permanent exhibition of artifacts and photographs from the continent's most productive 19th century fishing port.

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Tours are available on Saturday morning.

Office is at 4 Harbor Lane, Fitz Hugh Lane House.

A rare survivor, Adventure is an irreplaceable artifact from an extraordinary era in American history. A prominent destination site on the Essex National Heritage Area Maritime Trail, Adventure was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1989 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1994. Adventure serves as a living memorial to the more than five thousand Gloucester fishermen lost at sea and was honored to be selected as an Official Project of Save America's Treasures by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1999.

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Hours: Memorial Day to Labor Day: Daily 10:00 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. After Labor Day: Weekends 10:30am - 5:30pm.

Dedicated to the preservation of Gloucester's maritime industrial history, the Gloucester Maritime Heritage Center occupies nearly two acres overlooking Gloucester Harbor. The Center features the oldest continuously operating marine railway in the country.

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Year-round, daily, sunrise to sunset. Allow a minimum of 2 hours.

Long treasured by residents of Gloucester and neighboring towns, Ravenswood Park offers a tranquil wooded setting for walking, cross-country skiing, or snowshoeing along almost ten miles of trails and carriage paths. Visitors may enjoy the overlook to Gloucester Harbor and traverse a boardwalk through the Great Magnolia Swamp, home to native sweet bay magnolias (Magnolia virginiana). A plaque marks the spot in the woods where naturalist Mason "The Hermit" Walton built his cabin in the 1880s.

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The Sargent House is open for guided tours Memorial Day to Columbus Day, Friday through Monday, 12:00PM to 4:00PM. The Museum is also open for tours Thursdays, 12 to 4:00, during the months of July and August.

A fine example of Georgian architecture, it was built in 1782 for writer and activist Judith Sargent Murray, this country's earliest champion of women's equality, education and economic independence, and shared by her husband, Reverend John Murray, the founder of Universalism in America.

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Mid May - Mid October, up to 4 daily sails

Join us for a two-hour sail and get a taste for what it was like to sail on a fishing schooner a hundred years ago. Help the crew raise the sails, or sit back and take in the sights and sounds of Gloucester's working harbor and scenic coastline. Our wooden ship looks like a traditional 1903 fishing schooner, but she was just built in Essex in 1997.

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Open first Thursday before Memorial Day through weekend before Halloween:
July, August & September: 9am - 6pm, 7 days/week;
May, June and October: same hours, Thursday through Sunday only.

Gloucester's Visitor and Welcoming Center is located in historic Stage Fort Park. This area was the site for the city's first settlement in 1623. Visitors to the Center will be able to find out any information they need to know about Gloucester to make their stay in the area an enjoyable experience.

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Summer & Fall (June - October) Wednesday through Sunday,10:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Winter & Spring (November – May) Saturday and Sunday, 10:00 to 5:00.

See how wooden vessels were built. See and feel the actual tools that built them. Learn the lost art of the mold loftsman. Bore a hole. Caulk a seam. Relive history through dioramas, full-scale construction displays, hands-on exhibits, video presentations and a real schooner - all at The Essex Shipbuilding Museum. The home of so many of Cape Ann's best kept secrets.

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8am - 4pm daily.

The largest of the Refuge's islands, the 135-acre Choate Island supports myriad birds and mammals including deer, fisher, coyote, and otter. The spruce forest planted in the early 20th century attracts golden crown kinglets and sharp-shinned hawks, while Choate Island's grasslands provide critical habitat for bobolinks and Savannah sparrows. Gulls, sanderlings, and sandpipers feed along the Island's shore.

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Open: June 1 through October 15
Wednesday through Sunday
Tours at 11 a.m., noon, 1 p.m., 2 p.m., 3 p.m. and 4 p.m.

In 1937, the Littles purchased this 18th-century farmhouse overlooking the Essex River as a family retreat and place to entertain. They restored it carefully, trying to preserve original 18th-century finishes and carefully documenting their work. In more than 50 years of collecting, they sought works of strong, even quirky character, and in particular favored objects with their original finishes and New England histories.

They decorated the house for visual delight rather than historic accuracy. The result is rich in atmosphere and crowded with collections of things -- primitive paintings, redware, painted furniture, stacked Shaker boxes, weather vanes and decoys -- that have since come to define the country look.

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Daily, Dawn to Dusk

The Cox Reservation, owned by the Essex County Greenbelt Association, consists of two parcels: a four-acre woodlot on nearby Lufkin Street and the 27 acres of upland, salt marsh, farmland with house and barn, and river frontage on Eastern Avenue. The views from the larger parcel east toward the salt marsh, the Essex River, the back of Crane Beach, and Castle Hill and Choate Island are magnificent. The Greenbelt headquarters and staff offices are located at the Cox Reservation, as well as many Greenbelt events throughout the year.

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Open year-round, daily, sunrise to sunset

While most of Stavros Reservation protects more than fifty acres of salt marsh, its most popular feature is White's Hill, a coastal drumlin that offers panoramic views of Crane Beach, the Crane Wildlife Refuge (Choate Island), and Halibut Point. A half-mile loop trail leads through an open field and enters the woods at the base of White's Hill. It climbs gradually to a field at the crest of the hill and then loops back down the hill through a thicket of Devil's walking stick, broken only by a small hillside clearing that offers views over the salt marshes to Castle Hill.