The new Essex Coastal Scenic Byway links thirteen towns on the North Shore of Massachusetts to highlight their history, culture and scenic beauty. From Lynn to Salem to Gloucester to Newburyport, the Byway leads travelers to picturesque downtowns and busy working harbors, along sandy beaches and rocky shores.
There are plenty of guidebooks to tell visitors which motels have pools and which restaurants get three stars. What they need is a book written by someone who can tell them why the Great Marsh is important to everyone and where you really get the best fried clams and how Motif #1 got so famous. Someone who can also make the connections between the proud and sometimes difficult history of cargo ships and privateers and fishing schooners and today’s very different environment of arts and culture and environmental preservation.
I grew up near Essex County and visited often. I’ve lived in Newburyport for almost fifteen years and written about life on the North Shore for the Boston Globe since 2005. I’ve kayaked the marshes, sailed the coast, biked and hiked and bird-watched, sometimes for a story and sometimes just for fun. From all this comes an appreciation of what makes the North Shore special and how its seemingly disparate parts fit together.
THE ESSEX COASTAL BYWAY GUIDE is divided into 14 chapters – for the 13 towns plus Plum Island – featuring separate entries on dozens of the area’s attractions, from the Crane Estate to the Lynn Museum and from the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge to Singing Beach. It will come out as a paperback and e-book in October.
Joel Brown from NBPT writes-
You reach so many people, I was hoping you’d do a post on the ESSEX COASTAL BYWAY GUIDE, which I’m publishing this fall. I think many of your readers would be interested to know this is coming and maybe support it. It’s not officially connected with Essex Heritage or Essex Coastal Scenic Byway, but they’re aware and the executive director has written a foreword.
Here’s The Kickstarter for the project, which will fund the first printing and help pay the cover artist (Dylan Metrano, who did the paper cuts, lives in Rockport in the cold months) and the designer and copyeditor: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joelbrown/essex-coastal-byway-guide
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