Massachusetts Counties, based on Survey Towns. Contains the 14 county polygons and a detailed coastline. Published as a map service from MassGIS' ArcGIS Server platform.See full metadata

This map service from MassGIS displays the 26 Massachusetts Gateway Cities, municipalities with:population greater than 35,000 and less than 250,000;median household income below the state average;and rate of educational attainment of a bachelor’s degree or above that is below the state average.Read more about Gateway CitiesFeature service also available.

Town of Natick, MA printable Map

This political boundary layer is the most accurate representing the city and town boundaries in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.This datalayer has been created from latitude and longitude coordinates found in the 68-volume Harbor and Lands Commission Town Boundary Atlas. This Atlas series, and updates since it was published, describes the legal boundary for each of the 351 municipalities in Massachusetts.
These coordinates were recorded from surveys of the location of each boundary marker around the periphery of each community. Each survey was tied into higher order monumented survey control points. The Atlases also include detailed descriptions of each community's boundary and location maps for each of the original boundary marker locations. The original surveys were conducted in the 1890s. The Atlas series was published in the early 1900s and has since been updated by the Survey Section of the Massachusetts Highway Department with changes as they are approved by the legislature.MassGIS staff collaborated closely with staff from the Survey Section during the development of this data layer. MassGIS staff keyed the coordinates into a database; that data entry was double-checked by staff from the Survey Section. Staff from the Survey Section then converted the latitude/longitude coordinates to the NAD83 datum and also created a version of the coordinates in state plane coordinates with units of meters. MassGIS used the state plane coordinates to "generate" points in ArcGIS. Boundary arcs from the existing USGS-derived municipal boundary data layer were then snapped to the survey-derived points. The differences between the municipal boundary arcs digitized from those on the USGS quads and those created by snapping to the survey-derived coordinates are typically plus or minus 12 feet, although these differences are sometimes less and sometimes more. Some municipal boundary arcs (about 15% of the total) follow the edge of a road or rail right-of-way or a stream or river channel. In these cases, the new boundary arcs were "heads up" digitized based on features visible on the statewide 1:5,000 color orthos from imagery flown in 2001. For communities with a coastal boundary, MassGIS collaborated with the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority and the Department of Environmental Protection to complete a 1:12,000 scale coastline.The boundaries are included in Esri's World Topographic Map through participation in its Community Maps program.City/Town names' labels are included in this service.(This service was published from a map document using the Web Mercator projection for the data frame.)For full metadata please see https://www.mass.gov/info-details/massgis-data-municipalities

Background and Data Limitations The Massachusetts 1830 map series represents a unique data source that depicts land cover and cultural features during the historical period of widespread land clearing for agricultural. To our knowledge, Massachusetts is the only state in the US where detailed land cover information was comprehensively mapped at such an early date. As a result, these maps provide unusual insight into land cover and cultural patterns in 19th century New England. However, as with any historical data, the limitations and appropriate uses of these data must be recognized: (1) These maps were originally developed by many different surveyors across the state, with varying levels of effort and accuracy. (2) It is apparent that original mapping did not follow consistent surveying or drafting protocols; for instance, no consistent minimum mapping unit was identified or used by different surveyors; as a result, whereas some maps depict only large forest blocks, others also depict small wooded areas, suggesting that numerous smaller woodlands may have gone unmapped in many towns. Surveyors also were apparently not consistent in what they mapped as ‘woodlands’: comparison with independently collected tax valuation data from the same time period indicates substantial lack of consistency among towns in the relative amounts of ‘woodlands’, ‘unimproved’ lands, and ‘unimproveable’ lands that were mapped as ‘woodlands’ on the 1830 maps. In some instances, the lack of consistent mapping protocols resulted in substantially different patterns of forest cover being depicted on maps from adjoining towns that may in fact have had relatively similar forest patterns or in woodlands that ‘end’ at a town boundary. (3) The degree to which these maps represent approximations of ‘primary’ woodlands (i.e., areas that were never cleared for agriculture during the historical period, but were generally logged for wood products) varies considerably from town to town, depending on whether agricultural land clearing peaked prior to, during, or substantially after 1830. (4) Despite our efforts to accurately geo-reference and digitize these maps, a variety of additional sources of error were introduced in converting the mapped information to electronic data files (see detailed methods below). Thus, we urge considerable caution in interpreting these maps. Despite these limitations, the 1830 maps present an incredible wealth of information about land cover patterns and cultural features during the early 19th century, a period that continues to exert strong influence on the natural and cultural landscapes of the region. Acknowledgements Financial support for this project was provided by the BioMap Project of the Massachusetts Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program, the National Science Foundation, and the Andrew Mellon Foundation. This project is a contribution of the Harvard Forest Long Term Ecological Research Program.

Town of Chelmsford, MA GIS Viewer

The symbology of the data in this hosted tile layer is optimized for display atop aerial (ortho) imagery. Tiles are available for levels 7 through 20.Map Features for imagery include:

Political Boundaries: Massachusetts cities and towns, counties and state border, MassGIS).Transportation: Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) Roads (MassDOT, MassGIS); MBTA subway and Commuter Rail lines and stations (Central Transportation Planning Staff, MassGIS); Airports, Ferry Routes and Seaports (MassDOT); Airport Runways and Airfields (Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA))Infrastructure and Facilities: Lighthouses and Lights (Massachusetts Coastal Zone Management); Schools (Pre-K-High School) (Massachusetts Department of Education, MassGIS); Colleges and Universities (MassGIS); Acute Care Hospitals and Non-acute Care Hospitals (Massachusetts Department of Public Health Office of Emergency Medical Services, CHIA); Libraries, Police Stations, Fire Stations, Town Halls, Places of Worship, Courthouses, Prisons.This service is used in the MassGIS Image Basemap.

Download PDF maps here.Land Use Map - 11X17in color mapLand Use Map - 34X46in color map

MassGIS' standardized assessors’ parcel mapping data set contains property (land lot) boundaries and database information from each community's assessor.The data were developed through a competitive procurement funded by MassGIS. Each community in the Commonwealth was bid on by one or more vendors and the unit of work awarded was a city or town. The specification for this work was Level 3 of the MassGIS Digital Parcel Standard.This map service contains three feature classes and one table.Feature service also available.See the datalayer page for full details.

This datalayer is part of a group of layers used for research in the Ipswich River Watershed. This layer includes the area within each town in the Ipswich River Watershed in vector form. This map contains complete information and was derived from the ip30_noinfo_towns layer. To show area within the towns the make up the Ipswich River Watershed study area.

Town of Webster, MA GIS Viewer

This is a seven-category land-cover map of Wilmington, Massachusetts. The seven categories are: bare soil, coniferous trees, decidous trees, grass, impervious surface, water, and wetlands. Note: Complete metadata is available within the downloaded zip file. This metadata can be viewed with ESRI ArcGIS software, and can be exported to FGDC and ISO metadata formats.

Maps coming up....

This is a seven-category land-cover map of North Andover, Massachusetts. The seven categories are: bare soil, coniferous trees, decidous trees, grass, impervious surface, water, and wetlands. Note: Complete metadata is available within the downloaded zip file. This metadata can be viewed with ESRI ArcGIS software, and can be exported to FGDC and ISO metadata formats.

Town of Longmeadow, MA GIS Viewer

This is a seven-category land-cover map of Billerica, Massachusetts. The seven categories are: bare soil, coniferous trees, decidous trees, grass, impervious surface, water, and wetlands. Note: Complete metadata is available within the downloaded zip file. This metadata can be viewed with ESRI ArcGIS software, and can be exported to FGDC and ISO metadata formats.

This is a seven-category land-cover map of Middleton, Massachusetts. The seven categories are: bare soil, coniferous trees, decidous trees, grass, impervious surface, water, and wetlands. Note: Complete metadata is available within the downloaded zip file. This metadata can be viewed with ESRI ArcGIS software, and can be exported to FGDC and ISO metadata formats.

This polygon data layer contains the six Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) Highway Districts in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The districts supervise all construction within its jurisdiction; performs on-site engineering; implements maintenance and preventative maintenance programs; generates proposals for maintenance and construction work; and provides engineering support to cities and towns.ProductionThe bounds of the MassDOT Highway Districts were digitized from the MassGIS survey-level town boundaries. In addition to the polygon layer, there is an arc layer following the same line work as the polygon included in the downloadable shape file.MetadataStatusThis data is current as of September 2013.

This is a seven-category land-cover map of Beverly, Massachusetts. The seven categories are: bare soil, coniferous trees, decidous trees, grass, impervious surface, water, and wetlands. Note: Complete metadata is available within the downloaded zip file. This metadata can be viewed with ESRI ArcGIS software, and can be exported to FGDC and ISO metadata formats.

The political boundary datalayer is a polygon representation of town boundaries created from arcs developed from survey coordinates extracted from the 68-volume Harbor and Lands Commission Town Boundary Atlas for the 351 communities (cities and towns) in Massachusetts. The Atlas was published in the early 1900's and is maintained by the Survey Section of Massachusetts Highway Department. For communities with a coastal boundary, MassGIS has collaborated with Massachusetts Water Resources Authority and the Department of Environmental Protection to complete a 1:12000 scale coastline. The boundary for the coastline was defined as being the upland side of tidal flats and rocky inter-tidal zones. Note that the 351 communities are the official municipal names, not including "villages" or other sections of towns.This datalayer was created for the purposes of providing an up-to-date polygon version of the town boundaries for the 351 cities and towns of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The legislative intent for some boundaries could not be mapped. Boundaries where that is true are identified in the attribute information. This layer contains multi-part polygons, one for each municipality. The coastline on this layer has been generalized for small-scale cartography and faster display in web map services.See the layer metadata for details.