Massachusetts city and town boundaries, drawn with yellow lines, and labeled with yellow municipal names, ideal for display atop aerial photography.Please see https://www.mass.gov/info-details/massgis-data-municipalities for full metadata.

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.

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 http://www.mass.gov/itd/townsurvey.

Thematic map of Massachusetts cities and towns 1999: education, poverty, and income. Thematic map of Massachusetts cities and towns by percent of the 25 and older population with a high school graduate degree or higher. Thematic map of the percent of families below the poverty level in 1999. Thematic map of 1999 median household income

This map service displays the year in which cities and towns in Massachusetts were first settled by Europeans. The data were gathered by the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Sources include: 2010 Census Report; Community Profiles, Department of Housing and Community Development; Historic Atlas of Massachusetts, University of Massachusetts Press 1991.Data source: https://www.sec.state.ma.us/divisions/cis/historical/incorporation-settlement.htmFeature service also available.

Town of Natick, MA printable Map

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 CitiesMap service also available.

To access parcel information:Enter an address or zoom in by using the +/- tools or your mouse scroll wheel. Parcels will draw when zoomed in.Click on a parcel to display a popup with information about that parcel.Click the "Basemap" button to display background aerial imagery.From the "Layers" button you can turn map features on and off.Complete Help (PDF)Parcel Legend:Full Map LegendAbout this ViewerThis viewer displays land property boundaries from assessor parcel maps across Massachusetts. Each parcel is linked to selected descriptive information from assessor databases. Data for all 351 cities and towns are the standardized "Level 3" tax parcels served by MassGIS. More details ...Read about and download parcel dataUpdatesV 1.1: Added 'Layers' tab. (2018)V 1.2: Reformatted popup to use HTML table for columns and made address larger. (Jan 2019)V 1.3: Added 'Download Parcel Data by City/Town' option to list of layers. This box is checked off by default but when activated a user can identify anywhere and download data for that entire city/town, except Boston. (March 14, 2019)V 1.4: Data for Boston is included in the "Level 3" standardized parcels layer. (August 10, 2020)V 1.4 MassGIS, EOTSS 2021

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.

This layer package contains GIS data in Esri file geodatabase format. This data is also available for download as a zip archive in shapefile format.Digital parcel files for the Town of Amherst, MA as of December 31, 2013. The Town converted its existing analog tax maps to digital format in 1998. At the time of conversion, tax maps consisted of 108 27"x39" mylar sheets at 1"=100', originally created in 1957 from controlled and rectified photography taken by Air Survey Inc. (VA) in 1956. The tax maps were scanned, and digital line files were created with text annotation. The new line files were then overlayed onto digital color orthophotos produced in 1999, and updated, by first matching road right-of-ways, then adjusting all parcel boundaries. This data set is a spatial view that is created through a one-to-many join between TOA_Parcels_Poly and TOA_CAMA_TABLE. The join is through Map & Lot, which creates stacked parcel polygons in cases where there are multiple block numbers (accounts) for one parcel; this occurs primarily with condominium complexes, as well as with properties with agricultural preservation restrictions. This data set is refreshed on a nightly basis & reflects current information from the Town of Amherst Assessor's Vision Appraisal Database.

MassGIS' standardized ("Level 3") property tax parcel mapping data set was 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. Standardization of assessor parcel mapping is complete for all 351 Massachusetts' cities and towns. MassGIS is now incorporating updates from municipalities into the database. This hosted feature layer is exported from MassGIS' internal database of the feature class GISDATA.L3_TAXPAR_POLY_ASSESS, which links L3_TAXPAR_POLY and L3_ASSESS. The export includes the expression: (POLY_TYPE IN ('FEE', 'TAX')) OR (POLY_TYPE IN ('ROW', 'PRIV_ROW', 'RAIL_ROW', 'WATER') AND PROP_ID IS NOT NULL) It contains several fields from GISDATA.L3_ASSESS and stacked polygons where multiple assessor records link to a parcel. It contains features that do not have an associated record in GISDATA.L3_ASSESS, except for rights of way and water bodies. ROWs and water bodies with a non-null PROP_ID are included. The data in this feature layer is used for the popups in the Massachusetts Interactive Property Map. See full data descriptionA hosted tile layer will draw very quickly at map scale of 1:18,056 (level 15) to 1:564 (level 20).

The geographic extent of the town of Easton, MA and surrounding cities and townsTown boundaries were copied from MassGIS Data - Community Boundaries (Towns) from Survey Points (last update November 2015). Edits were made to remove coast lines of internal waterways. The boundaries of for Taunton, Raynam and Bridgewater were copied from MassGIS - Community Boundaries (Towns) Without Coast (February 2014). Boundaries were edited to match those from Community Boundaries from Survey Points.

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

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.

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 Wakefield, MA GIS Viewer

Town of Dalton, MA GIS Viewer

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.

Download PDF maps here.Zoning Map - 11X17in color mapZoning Map - 30X16in black & white mapZoning Map - 34X46in color mapZoning Map - 8X11in black and white mapZip Code Map - 11X17in color mapZip Code Map - 34X46in color mapExisting Affordable Housing 2008 Map - 11X17in color mapExisting Affordable Housing 2010 Map - 11X17in color mapExisting Affordable Housing 2010 Map - 34X148 color mapCDBG Map Based upon 2000 Census Tract - 11X177 color mapNeighborhood Associations MapWireless Telecommunication Anetenna Location Map - 34X46 color map

This is a seven-category land-cover map of Boxford, 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 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. These files can also be exported to FGDC and ISO metadata formats.