Rockport. Rockport is a seaside town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States.
The population was 6,992 in 2020. Rockport is located approximately 40 miles northeast of Boston at the tip of the Cape Ann peninsula.
Rockport borders Gloucester to its west, and is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean in all other directions. Part of the town comprises the census-designated place of Rockport.
Before the coming of the English explorers and colonists, Cape Ann was home to a number of Native American villages, inhabited by members of the Agawam tribe. Samuel de Champlain named the peninsula Cap Aux Isles in 1605, and his expedition may have landed there briefly.
The first Europeans founded a permanent settlement at Gloucester in 1623. Richard Tarr, a granite cutter and the first settler of the Sandy Bay Colony, lived in the area that is now Rockport in 1680. He and his wife Elizabeth had ten children, those born after 1690 were recorded in the Sandy Bay Colony record books. Richard died around the year 1732. The area provided timber for shipbuilding, especially pine, and granite was extracted from the Sandy Bay quarries. The Cape Ann area provided one of the richest fishing grounds in New England and in 1743 a dock was built at Rockport harbor on Sandy Bay and was used for both timber export and fishing. By the beginning of the 19th century, the first granite quarries were developed and, by th
The population was 6,992 in 2020. Rockport is located approximately 40 miles northeast of Boston at the tip of the Cape Ann peninsula.
Rockport borders Gloucester to its west, and is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean in all other directions. Part of the town comprises the census-designated place of Rockport.
Before the coming of the English explorers and colonists, Cape Ann was home to a number of Native American villages, inhabited by members of the Agawam tribe. Samuel de Champlain named the peninsula Cap Aux Isles in 1605, and his expedition may have landed there briefly.
The first Europeans founded a permanent settlement at Gloucester in 1623. Richard Tarr, a granite cutter and the first settler of the Sandy Bay Colony, lived in the area that is now Rockport in 1680. He and his wife Elizabeth had ten children, those born after 1690 were recorded in the Sandy Bay Colony record books. Richard died around the year 1732. The area provided timber for shipbuilding, especially pine, and granite was extracted from the Sandy Bay quarries. The Cape Ann area provided one of the richest fishing grounds in New England and in 1743 a dock was built at Rockport harbor on Sandy Bay and was used for both timber export and fishing. By the beginning of the 19th century, the first granite quarries were developed and, by th
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