Salisbury Beach State Reservation

About this park

Salisbury Beach State Reservation sits in Massachusetts' northernmost coastal town, right at the point where the Merrimack River empties into the Atlantic Ocean, just south of the New Hampshire border. The reservation encompasses the town's entire seacoast along with a small inland portion, giving it a genuinely substantial coastal footprint compared to many of the state's smaller beach parks. During World War II, the site hosted the Salisbury Beach Military Reservation, a coastal defense installation built in 1941 with large-caliber guns positioned to help protect the approach to Boston Harbor; the fire control structure, deliberately disguised to resemble an ordinary beach house, later served as a Massachusetts State Police barracks until a storm destroyed it in 1958. That military history has since given way entirely to recreation, though the strategic significance of this river-mouth location remains visible in the landscape. A large campground with 484 sites for tents, trailers, and RVs makes Salisbury Beach one of the biggest camping destinations in the entire Massachusetts state park system, and the wide sandy beach supports swimming, both motorized and non-motorized boating, fishing, and horseback riding. Its position where river meets ocean creates genuinely varied water conditions and scenery, and the reservation's scale and range of activities have made it a longstanding family vacation destination for the North Shore region.