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Essex, Massachusetts Guide | |
| Once famous for its shipbuilding, Essex, Massachusetts, near Cape Ann north of Boston, is now famous for clams and antiques. It's a great place to spend a day. | ||
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A day-trip to Essex MA, 34 miles northeast of Boston (map), includes a pleasant ride through pretty country, an hour or two browsing in the town's dozens of shops selling antiques and collectibles, a boat cruise, and a lunch or dinner of traditional seafood: clams and lobsters. Settled by Europeans in 1634, Essex was first known by its Agawam Indian name of Chebacco. Long before it was (finally) incorporated as a town in 1819, Essex was famous for its shipbuilding, as you will learn in detail if you visit the Essex Shipbuilding Museum, right next to a shipyard that still builds wooden boats. About those clams.... The tidal waters of the Essex River are perfect for the proliferation of succulent soft-shell clams, as the Agawam knew, and as the Europeans soon discovered. The traditional preparation—steaming the clams in seawater as part of a clambake—is what gave soft-shell clams their nickname: steamers. In the early 20th century, a local restaurateur named Chubby Woodman tried shucking clams (removing them from their shells), dipping them in evaporated milk, then corn or pastry flour, and deep-frying them in hot oil. The recipe caught on and soon fried clams were being made and served all over New England. Woodman's Restaurant still exists, and is jammed on any night in warm weather, and many off-season as well. Other restaurants have opened to take advantage of the town's fried-clam fame as well. (Traditional fried clams are "bellies," whole soft-shell clams simply removed from their shells, but some fried clam places sell "clam strips," which are slices of large ocean-caught hard-shell clams called quahogs ("KO-hogs"). That settles what to do for lunch when you come to Essex to browse in its 35 antique shops in the town center. To really see Essex close-up and natural, though, take a 90-minute cruise on the river with Essex River Cruises, launched three times daily from May through October. They'll even lay on a clambake if you have a group.
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Above, Essex
marina,
once the scene of great ship-building enterprises
in early America.
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