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.

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.

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); Licensed Child Care Programs (Department of Early Education and Care); 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, DCR Pools.This service is used in the MassGIS Image Basemap.

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

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 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.

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.

The 2022 cartographic boundary KMLs are simplified representations of selected geographic areas from the U.S. Census Bureau's Master Address File / Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (MAF/TIGER) Database (MTDB). These boundary files are specifically designed for small-scale thematic mapping. When possible, generalization is performed with the intent to maintain the hierarchical relationships among geographies and to maintain the alignment of geographies within a file set for a given year. Geographic areas may not align with the same areas from another year. Some geographies are available as nation-based files while others are available only as state-based files. The cartographic boundary files include both incorporated places (legal entities) and census designated places or CDPs (statistical entities). An incorporated place is established to provide governmental functions for a concentration of people as opposed to a minor civil division (MCD), which generally is created to provide services or administer an area without regard, necessarily, to population. Places always nest within a state, but may extend across county and county subdivision boundaries. An incorporated place usually is a city, town, village, or borough, but can have other legal descriptions. CDPs are delineated for the decennial census as the statistical counterparts of incorporated places. CDPs are delineated to provide data for settled concentrations of population that are identifiable by name, but are not legally incorporated under the laws of the state in which they are located. The boundaries for CDPs often are defined in partnership with state, local, and/or tribal officials and usually coincide with visible features or the boundary of an adjacent incorporated place or another legal entity. CDP boundaries often change from one decennial census to the next with changes in the settlement pattern and development; a CDP with the same name as in an earlier census does not necessarily have the same boundary. The only population/housing size requirement for CDPs is that they must contain some housing and population. The generalized boundaries of most incorporated places in this file are based on those as of January 1, 2022, as reported through the Census Bureau's Boundary and Annexation Survey (BAS). The generalized boundaries of all CDPs are based on those delineated as part of the Census Bureau's Participant Statistical Areas Program (PSAP) for the 2020 Census.

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).

A dataset listing Massachusetts cities by population for 2024.

This map service contains boundaries for the following types of public school districts:Local School - administered by a city or town school committee.Regional Academic - administered by a regional school committee.Regional Vocational Technical - administered by a regional vocational school committee.Independent Vocational and County Agricultural - administered by a board of trustees.Independent Public, including Commonwealth Charter Schools and Horace Mann Charter SchoolsDistrict information as of December 2, 2014, was obtained from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (ESE).For full metadata see https://www.mass.gov/info-details/massgis-data-public-school-districtsMap service also available.

Town of Natick, MA printable Map

Terms of UseData Limitations and DisclaimerThe user’s use of and/or reliance on the information contained in the Document shall be at the user’s own risk and expense. MassDEP disclaims any responsibility for any loss or harm that may result to the user of this data or to any other person due to the user’s use of the Document.This is an ongoing data development project. Attempts have been made to contact all PWS systems, but not all have responded with information on their service area. MassDEP will continue to collect and verify this information. Some PWS service areas included in this datalayer have not been verified by the PWS or the municipality involved, but since many of those areas are based on information published online by the municipality, the PWS, or in a publicly available report, they are included in the estimated PWS service area datalayer.Please note: All PWS service area delineations are estimates for broad planning purposes and should only be used as a guide. The data is not appropriate for site-specific or parcel-specific analysis. Not all properties within a PWS service area are necessarily served by the system, and some properties outside the mapped service areas could be served by the PWS – please contact the relevant PWS. Not all service areas have been confirmed by the systems.Please use the following citation to reference these data:MassDEP, Water Utility Resilience Program. 2025. Community and Non-Transient Non-Community Public Water System Service Area (PubV2025_3).IMPORTANT NOTICE: This MassDEP Estimated Water Service datalayer may not be complete, may contain errors, omissions, and other inaccuracies and the data are subject to change. This version is published through MassGIS. We want to learn about the data uses. If you use this dataset, please notify staff in the Water Utility Resilience Program (WURP@mass.gov).This GIS datalayer represents approximate service areas for Public Water Systems (PWS) in Massachusetts. In 2017, as part of its “Enhancing Resilience and Emergency Preparedness of Water Utilities through Improved Mapping” (Critical Infrastructure Mapping Project ), the MassDEP Water Utility Resilience Program (WURP) began to uniformly map drinking water service areas throughout Massachusetts using information collected from various sources. Along with confirming existing public water system (PWS) service area information, the project collected and verified estimated service area delineations for PWSs not previously delineated and will continue to update the information contained in the datalayers. As of the date of publication, WURP has delineated Community (COM) and Non-Transient Non-Community (NTNC) service areas. Transient non-community (TNCs) are not part of this mapping project.Layers and Tables:The MassDEP Estimated Public Water System Service Area data comprises two polygon feature classes and a supporting table. Some data fields are populated from the MassDEP Drinking Water Program’s Water Quality Testing System (WQTS) and Annual Statistical Reports (ASR).The Community Water Service Areas feature class (PWS_WATER_SERVICE_AREA_COMM_POLY) includes polygon features that represent the approximate service areas for PWS classified as Community systems.The NTNC Water Service Areas feature class (PWS_WATER_SERVICE_AREA_NTNC_POLY) includes polygon features that represent the approximate service areas for PWS classified as Non-Transient Non-Community systems.The Unlocated Sites List table (PWS_WATER_SERVICE_AREA_USL) contains a list of known, unmapped active Community and NTNC PWS services areas at the time of publication.ProductionData UniversePublic Water Systems in Massachusetts are permitted and regulated through the MassDEP Drinking Water Program. The WURP has mapped service areas for all active and inactive municipal and non-municipal Community PWSs in MassDEP’s Water Quality Testing Database (WQTS). Community PWS refers to a public water system that serves at least 15 service connections used by year-round residents or regularly serves at least 25 year-round residents.All active and inactive NTNC PWS were also mapped using information contained in WQTS. An NTNC or Non-transient Non-community Water System refers to a public water system that is not a community water system and that has at least 15 service connections or regularly serves at least 25 of the same persons or more approximately four or more hours per day, four or more days per week, more than six months or 180 days per year, such as a workplace providing water to its employees.These data may include declassified PWSs. Staff will work to rectify the status/water services to properties previously served by declassified PWSs and remove or incorporate these service areas as needed.Maps of service areas for these systems were collected from various online and MassDEP sources to create service areas digitally in GIS. Every PWS is assigned a unique PWSID by MassDEP that incorporates the municipal ID of the municipality it serves (or the largest municipality it serves if it serves multiple municipalities). Some municipalities contain more than one PWS, but each PWS has a unique PWSID. The Estimated PWS Service Area datalayer, therefore, contains polygons with a unique PWSID for each PWS service area.A service area for a community PWS may serve all of one municipality (e.g. Watertown Water Department), multiple municipalities (e.g. Abington-Rockland Joint Water Works), all or portions of two or more municipalities (e.g. Provincetown Water Dept which serves all of Provincetown and a portion of Truro), or a portion of a municipality (e.g. Hyannis Water System, which is one of four PWSs in the town of Barnstable).Some service areas have not been mapped but their general location is represented by a small circle which serves as a placeholder. The location of these circles are estimates based on the general location of the source wells or the general estimated location of the service area - these do not represent the actual service area.Service areas were mapped initially from 2017 to 2022 and reflect varying years for which service is implemented for that service area boundary. WURP maintains the dataset quarterly with annual data updates; however, the dataset may not include all current active PWSs. A list of unmapped PWS systems is included in the USL table PWS_WATER_SERVICE_AREA_USL available for download with the dataset. Some PWSs that are not mapped may have come online after this iteration of the mapping project; these will be reconciled and mapped during the next phase of the WURP project. PWS IDs that represent regional or joint boards with (e.g. Tri Town Water Board, Randolph/Holbrook Water Board, Upper Cape Regional Water Cooperative) will not be mapped because their individual municipal service areas are included in this datalayer.PWSs that do not have corresponding sources, may be part of consecutive systems, may have been incorporated into another PWSs, reclassified as a different type of PWS, or otherwise taken offline. PWSs that have been incorporated, reclassified, or taken offline will be reconciled during the next data update.Methodologies and Data SourcesSeveral methodologies were used to create service area boundaries using various sources, including data received from the systems in response to requests for information from the MassDEP WURP project, information on file at MassDEP, and service area maps found online at municipal and PWS websites. When provided with water line data rather than generalized areas, 300-foot buffers were created around the water lines to denote service areas and then edited to incorporate generalizations. Some municipalities submitted parcel data or address information to be used in delineating service areas.Verification ProcessSmall-scale PDF file maps with roads and other infrastructure were sent to every PWS for corrections or verifications. For small systems, such as a condominium complex or residential school, the relevant parcels were often used as the basis for the delineated service area. In towns where 97% or more of their population is served by the PWS and no other service area delineation was available, the town boundary was used as the service area boundary. Some towns responded to the request for information or verification of service areas by stating that the town boundary should be used since all or nearly all of the municipality is served by the PWS.Sources of information for estimated drinking water service areasThe following information was used to develop estimated drinking water service areas:EOEEA Water Assets Project (2005) water lines (these were buffered to create service areas)Horsely Witten Report 2008Municipal Master Plans, Open Space Plans, Facilities Plans, Water Supply System Webpages, reports and online interactive mapsGIS data received from PWSDetailed infrastructure mapping completed through the MassDEP WURP Critical Infrastructure InitiativeIn the absence of other service area information, for municipalities served by a town-wide water system serving at least 97% of the population, the municipality’s boundary was used. Determinations of which municipalities are 97% or more served by the PWS were made based on the Percent Water Service Map created in 2018 by MassDEP based on various sources of information including but not limited to:The Winter population served submitted by the PWS in the ASR submittalThe number of services from WQTS as a percent of developed parcelsTaken directly from a Master Plan, Water Department Website, Open Space Plan, etc. found onlineCalculated using information from the town on the population servedMassDEP staff estimateHorsely Witten Report 2008Calculation based on Water System Areas Mapped through MassDEP WURP Critical Infrastructure Initiative, 2017-2022Information found in publicly available PWS planning documents submitted to MassDEP or as part of infrastructure planningMaintenanceThe

Map Tips Click on the Legend to view Average Household Size information.Zoom and Pan any map to see synchronized view of all maps.Click on Maps area to see charts and graphs. (Please pan the map to see full extent of charts and graphs if they are cut off by map window)Zoom map in larger scale to see population information by Block Groups and Blocks.Click on the Content to see information about the level of geography.

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.

This tile service is derived from a digital raster graphic of the historical 15-minute USGS topographic quadrangle maps of coastal towns in Massachusetts. These quadrangles were mosaicked together to create a single data layer of the coast of Massachusetts and a large portion of the southeastern area of the state.The Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management (CZM) obtained the map images from the Harvard Map Collection. The maps were produced in the late 1890s and early 20th century at a scale of 1:62,500 or 1:63,360 and are commonly known as 15-minute quadrangle maps because each map covers a four-sided area of 15 minutes of latitude and 15 minutes of longitude.

This datalayer is part of a group of layers used for research in the Ipswich River Watershed. This layer was created in July 2006 for Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole. This layer shows the boundaries for the towns in the Ipswich River Watershed and the Parker River Watershed. This data layer was created so that the town boundaries would correspond to the boundaries of the corresponding land use maps. This datalayer has complete information. Display town boundaries for the study area.

Maps coming up....

MassGIS has processed Massachusetts municipalities (cities and towns) from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2020 data release for Massachusetts to assist GIS users who may need access to these value-added datasets. These data are suitable for use with Census 2020 products and certain Census publications and demographics surveys created after 2020.See datalayer metadata.Map service also available.