Transportation

• Though not accessible directly by a major highway, Route 128 clips the corner of town, with exits located in neighboring Manchester-by-the-Sea and Gloucester. Route 133 passes from northwest to southeast through town, and the eastern end of Route 22 is at Route 133 in the center of town. The Ipswich Essex Explorer bus provides weekend service during the summer connecting with the MBTA Commuter Rail at Ipswich along the Newburyport/Rockport Line, as well as providing service to Crane Beach and other nearby attractions. The Rockport portion of the commuter rail line passes through neighboring Manchester-by-the-Sea and Gloucester.

Government

• Essex's municipal offices are housed in the Essex Town Hall and TOHP Burnham Library, an exuberant Shingle Style building erected in 1893-94.

• Essex's small size makes New England's traditional direct-democracy style of government practical. The residents of Essex elect a board of three selectmen to carry out the routine business of local government while relying on the town meeting system to decide major issues. In recent years, the most important of these issues has been the leasing of public lands at Conomo Point, a school regionalization plan with Manchester-by-the-Sea, and the construction of infrastructure for dealing with sewerage.

• In 2002 the town hired a Town Administrator to work for the board of selectmen and oversee day-to-day operations. Policy and major decisions are still verified by the town meeting.

Economy

• Seafood, tourism and antiques

• The main sources of income for the town of Essex are the shellfish industry and tourism. The fried clam recipe was reportedly invented in Essex by Chubby Woodman early in the 20th century. Due to the exceptional quality of the clam that lives in the tidal river in Essex, local restaurants thrive by preparing it along with other types of seafood. Tourists are mainly drawn to Essex for its restaurants, but in recent years leisure activities, such as excursions down the Essex River in boats or self-guided kayak trips, have become increasingly popular. One major disadvantage that Essex has is that its only beach is not easily accessible by land and, as such, is not a major draw for tourists, as are the beaches of neighboring Gloucester, Ipswich and Manchester-by-the-Sea. Essex, with an abundance of natural beauty, must also compete with nearby Rockport for tourists in search of quaint New England charm. In the last few decades, there has also emerged a flourishing antiques trade in Essex. The town now claims to have the density of antique shops in the United States.[citation needed]

Former shipbuilding center

• The town of Essex was once home to a prosperous shipbuilding trade. This industry accounted for most of the revenue of the town from the days of its settlement as Chebacco Parish until the early part of the 20th century. Once a leading supplier of schooners for Gloucester and other Atlantic fishing communities, Essex did not adapt to the transition from sail-powered wooden ships to engine-powered metal vessels, and this activity disappeared around World War II. There have been recent attempts to return to shipbuilding on a small scale as a tourist attraction and they have met with some success. The Essex Shipbuilding Museum stands as a living testament to the wooden shipbuilding industry and the neighboring boat yard owned by generations of the Story Family still constructs and launches classic wooden ships built in the Essex tradition.

Culture

• There are several active youth sports teams, as well as other youth organizations, such as the Boy Scouts of America and Girl Scouts of the USA.

• Since 1994 the Essex Music Festival, offering bluegrass, blues, folk, maritime, and Celtic music, has been held at Centennial Grove at Chebacco Lake in Essex. The festival was called off in 2009 due to Tropical Storm Danny, but it resumed the following year; another hurricane resulted in the cancellation of the 2011 festival, and it was not held in 2012 or 2013.

• Much of the film Grown Ups, filmed in the summer of 2009, used Centennial Grove at Chebacco Lake for filming.

• Points of Interest

• Chebacco Lake

• Choate House, birthplace of Rufus Choate

• Cogswell's Grant, c. 1728

• Conomo Point

• Cox Reservation — Essex County Greenbelt Association conservation Land

• Crane Wildlife Refuge

• Essex Shipbuilding Museum

• Essex Town Hall and TOHP Burnham Library

• First Congregational Church on Main Street; meeting house built 1792. A bell cast by Paul Revere in 1797 hangs in the belfry.

• Stavros Reservation

Primary

• Essex has one public school, Essex Elementary School, that offers instruction to children from pre-kindergarten to grade 5. The Essex Middle School had previously functioned to educate students to grade 8. But recent regionalization has brought the Essex Middle School children into the Manchester Essex Regional Middle School, located in the same building as both the Manchester Essex Regional High School and the previous Manchester Middle School.

Secondary

• The town of Essex does not include a high school, and in years past has had to send its grade 9 through 12 students to neighboring districts. Arrangements in the past have included sending high school students to Manchester-by-the-Sea, Gloucester and Hamilton-Wenham public schools. In 2000, the town approved a plan to create a regional school district with Manchester-by-the-Sea. Under the plan, the two towns are served by a consolidated school system, the "Manchester-Essex Schools", and a new high school. This marks the first time Essex did not have to send its students to another district to attend high school.

• In early 2006, the voters of both Essex and Manchester by the Sea approved a new $49 million regional school project for the purpose of building a new Middle School and High School. Both projects were approved at Town Meeting and then again at the ballot box for a debt-exclusion which will permit the towns to raise funds in excess of the 2.5% property tax cap mandated by Prop. 2.5. A similar $36 million plan three years earlier was defeated in Essex at the polls and approved in Manchester. Construction was completed in the summer of 2009, and students began attending the new middle-high school in the fall of 2009.