Ipswich River

River Streamflow Levels

Seasonal Discharge Comparison

Streamflow Elevation Profile

Ipswich River is a small river in northeastern Massachusetts, United States. It held significant importance in early colonial migrations inland from the ocean port of Ipswich. The river provided safe harborage at offshore Plum Island Sound to early Massachusetts subsistence farmers, who were also fishermen. A part of the river forms town boundaries and divides Essex County, Massachusetts on the coast from the more inland Middlesex County. It is 35 miles (56 km) long, and its watershed is approximately 155 square miles (401 km2), with an estimated population in the area of 160,000 people.Historically, the settlement of Essex County began at the oldest community there, the tiny seaport of Agawam (later renamed Ipswich), and typically proceeded westward and northward along the Ipswich or its tributary creeks. When Middlesex County was formed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, only Salem and Charlestown across the Charles River mouth and Boston harbor's inner estuary from Boston's much smaller hill dominated peninsula were older settlements.
The upper river runs through and drains at least parts of Burlington, the lower river forms part of the borders between the towns:

of North Reading and the town of Lynnfield
of Middleton and the city of Peabody
of Middleton and the town of Danvers, and
the town of Boxford and the Town of Topsfield.The wide swamps along the river made it impossible to ford the stream anywhere east of Wilmington in colonial times. The only route north out of Boston to the northeast (today called the Northshore) was via the Andover Road, an often muddy track, later made a wagon road which forded the stream just below the confluence of Lubbers and Maple Meadow brooks.