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.
https://dataverse.harvard.edu/api/datasets/:persistentId/versions/3.1/customlicense?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/ZU78KJhttps://dataverse.harvard.edu/api/datasets/:persistentId/versions/3.1/customlicense?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/ZU78KJ
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
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.
Compiled in this map are datasets from and hosted by the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, Mass GIS, and the Center for Coastal Studies that focus on public access areas including: public beaches and other recreational space, conservation lands, boat ramps and marinas. Note:Open space continually changes, as explained on the MassGIS webpage, therefore please consider the Protected and Open Space layers as underdevelopment. Additionally, open space parcels are general representations and not a legal record of ownership. The following types of land included in this layer may be privately or publicly owned. Public access categories refer to legal (not physical) levels of public access and includes some areas of limited public access ( by membership only).Definitions for Level of Protection In Perpetuity (P)- Legally protected in perpetuity and recorded as such in a deed or other official document. Land is considered protected in perpetuity if it is owned by the town’s conservation commission or, sometimes, by the water department; if a town has a conservation restriction on the property in perpetuity; if it is owned by one of the state’s conservation agencies (thereby covered by article 97); if it is owned by a non-profit land trust; or if the town received federal or state assistance for the purchase or improvement of the property. Private land is considered protected if it has a deed restriction in perpetuity, if an Agriculture Preservation Restriction has been placed on it, or a Conservation Restriction has been placed on it.Temporary (T) - Legally protected for less than perpetuity (e.g. short term conservation restriction), or temporarily protected through an existing functional use. For example, some water district lands are only temporarily protected while water resource protection is their primary use.These lands could be developed for other uses at the end of their temporary protection or when their functional use is no longer necessary. These lands will revert to unprotected status at a given date unless protection status is extended.Limited (L) - Protected by legal mechanisms other than those above, or protected through functional or traditional use.These lands might be protected by a requirement of a majority municipal vote for any change in status. This designation also includes lands that are likely to remain open space for other reasons (e.g. cemeteries and municipal golf courses).None (N) - Totally unprotected by any legal or functional means. This land is usually privately owned and could be sold without restriction at any time for another use (e.g. scout camps, private golf course, and private woodland).For more information about this open space layer please visit MassGIS Content
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.
https://spdx.org/licenses/CC0-1.0https://spdx.org/licenses/CC0-1.0
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.
U.S. Government Workshttps://www.usa.gov/government-works
License information was derived automatically
ESRI polygon feature class representing the City of Somerville, Massachusetts city boundary.
ODC Public Domain Dedication and Licence (PDDL) v1.0http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/pddl/1.0/
License information was derived automatically
This layer represents all the public and many of the private roadways in Massachusetts, including designations for Interstate, U.S. and State routes.
Formerly known as the Massachusetts Highway Department (MHD) Roads, then the Executive Office of Transportation - Office of Transportation Planning (EOT-OTP) Roads, the MassDOT roads layer includes linework from the 1:5,000 road and rail centerlines data that were interpreted as part of the 1990s Black and White Digital Orthophoto project. The Massachusetts Department of Transportation - Office of Transportation Planning, which maintains this layer, continues to add linework from municipal and other sources and update existing linework using the most recent color ortho imagery as a base. The attribute table includes many "road inventory" items maintained in MassDOT's linear referencing system.
The data layer published in November 2018 is based on the MassDOT 2017 year-end Road Inventory layer and results of a 2014-2015 MassDOT-Central Transportation Planning Staff project to conflate street names and other attributes from MassGIS' "base streets" to the MassDOT Road Inventory linework. The base streets are continually maintained by MassGIS as part of the NextGen 911 and Master Address Database projects. MassGIS staff reviewed the conflated layer and added many base street arcs digitized after the completion of the conflation work. MassGIS added several fields to support legacy symbology and labeling. Other edits included modifying some linework in areas of recent construction and roadway reconfiguration to align to 2017-2018 Google ortho imagery, and making minor fixes to attributes and linework.
In ArcSDE this layer is named EOTROADS_ARC.
From this data layer MassGIS extracted the Major Roads and Major Highway Routes layers.
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).
Crosswalk numbers for the city of Boston. Generated in July 2008 from original maps dated 1951-1962 and related sketches. Placed using centerlines from Water and Sewer as well as block defintions. Shapefiles for individual districts were merged into this one file but do not have an active connection. Some discrepency between centerlines and earlier maps was allowed, though obvious problems were marked in red. The legend is consistent between all districts, except for Roxbury where the map did not distinguish mid-block or school crosswalks.
U.S. Government Workshttps://www.usa.gov/government-works
License information was derived automatically
Polygon feature class representing the City of Somerville, Massachusetts zoning map adopted December 12, 2019 as part of the City of Somerville Zoning Overhaul (https://www.somervillezoning.com/). Last amended by City Council December 12, 2024 per Ordinance 2024-16. This dataset last updated April 4, 2025.
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.
This is a seven-category land-cover map of Burlington, 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 Natick, MA printable Map
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.
The CT Municipalities layer consists of individual polygons representing each of the 169 municipalities that make up the state of Connecticut. This feature class is based on the Towns layer originally created by CTDEEP from USGS maps. The towns from the CTDEEP data were dissolved to create 169 records (one for each town). Fields were added and deleted to create a generic schema.
The CT Municipalities feature class was created in (municipality) alphabetical order. Fields were added to identify the municipality number and the CTDOT Municipality number, which differ from each other in some cases. In 1947 the town of Saybrook officially changed its name to Deep River. Other State agencies and municipalities changed their numbering systems to reflect this name change, however, most of what is now CTDOT kept their existing numbering system. This is why the CTDOT town number for Deep River is 122, the number formerly assigned to Saybrook.
The square miles associated with each town are for their interior land mass area. Coastal communities have boundaries that extend into Long Island Sound. These town boundary extensions into Long Island Sound are not included in the square miles field.
CTDOT has created and will maintain a cartographic rendering of the geometric shape of Municipal boundaries. Official Town and City designations as incorporated areas consisting of an authorized governing body are managed by CT's Office of Policy and Management (OPM).
CTDOT has undertaken a good faith effort to represent the boundaries cartographically in a fair and equitable fashion, from the best available data compiled from existing state, regional, and local resources including - existing historical cartographic renderings of the boundary locations, supplemental survey information, and map submissions. Corrections can be submitted to the CTDOT for incorporation and correction where applicable.
Attribution was assigned to designations managed by a variety of entities that strictly follow Municipal boundaries and additional designations will be added as requested by State, regional, and local partners.
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.
This is a seven-category land-cover map of Groveland, 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 Woburn, 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.
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.