Cape Ann Roads Library

Every study, plan, law, map and data source we could find about the roads and bridges of Gloucester, Rockport, Essex and Manchester-by-the-Sea, from the first highways laid out in the 1640s to plans still waiting for money. Read them here, search every page, and see what happened next.

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Every word must appear on the page. Put a phrase in quotes ("Five Corners"), or end a word with * to match its endings (flood*).

Documents we know exist but could not find online

Other reports mention these, but we could not find a public copy. If you have one, or know where one is, email [email protected] and we will add it.

• Gloucester's 2013 pavement management study, which estimated $17 million in needed repairs to city streets.
• Gloucester's 2000 downtown traffic circulation study and its 2013 downtown parking study, both cited in the city's 2024 parking assessment.
• The June 2018 state road safety audit of Route 133 (John Wise Avenue) in Essex, the basis for the state's planned safety project there.
• The September 2018 state road safety audit of Blackburn Circle in Gloucester.
• The final version of Gloucester's 2025 to 2035 Comprehensive Plan. The link on the plan's website no longer works.
• Pavement or road condition plans for Rockport, Essex and Manchester.

How we built this

We searched the websites of the four towns, the Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization and its staff (CTPS), the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, the Cape Ann Transportation Authority, the State Library of Massachusetts, the Internet Archive, Digital Commonwealth and the U.S. Geological Survey. Each entry links to its source. We keep our own copy of documents from city, town and agency websites, because those pages often move or disappear. Historic books, laws and maps that already live in permanent public archives are linked there.

To make every page searchable we used each file's own text, and read scanned pages with optical character recognition software. Scanned text can contain errors, so check a quote against the page image before relying on it. The summaries and key points are ours, written from each document. The documents themselves are public records.

Some state documents could not be copied automatically; those link to the state's website. See the crash data on our Road Safety page.