Salisbury

Town in northeastern Massachusetts, in Essex County, 58 km/36 mi northeast of Boston, at the mouth of the Merrimack River; population (2000 est) 4,500. It is primarily residential and commercial. Tourism is the most important industry, as more than 200,000 visitors come to its six-km/four-mi beach each year.

It was settled as Colchester in 1638 and incorporated as Salisbury two years later; in the past the economy has depended on fishing, shipbuilding, and 19th-century woollen manufacture.