SALISBURY

Colonial Era

Salisbury was colonized by the English in 1638 as Colchester, and incorporated in 1640 as Salisbury, after Salisbury in Wiltshire, England, the birthplace of Christopher Batt who was appointed to train the colonists' militia. The original settlement was laid out in a compact semicircle, which allowed the residents to quickly reach the garrison house, out of a fear of attack by surrounding native peoples. Those roads still exist, though the shape today is triangular, being bounded by Elm Street, School Street and Bridge Road. A second threat came from eastern wolves, which were plentiful, and which killed the livestock and dug in the graveyard.

Salisbury was one of the six towns originally incorporated into Old Norfolk County. However in 1679, when four of those towns were broken off to form the Province of New Hampshire, Salisbury was annexed by Essex County.

The original residents, including Richard Currier, were given one small house lot near the center of town, and one larger planting lot just outside the center for farming. Families also owned large sections of "sweepage lots" near the beach, where apparently they harvested the salt marsh hay. At the time, the area was almost entirely unbroken virgin forest, which had to be cleared for the construction of houses and the planting of fields.

Richard Currier was a millwright and was one of the original settlers of Salisbury. He is listed in the first division of house lots in 1640 and received additional land in 1641 and 1642. In 1654 there were sixty commoners in Salisbury and they voted that thirty families were to be chosen to move west of the Powwow River. Eighteen of these families were commoners and the number of commoners were increased to 26 by the time Salisbury New Town became the town of Amesbury in 1668. Richard heads the list of the eighteen commoners and was one of the signers to the Articles of Agreement between the inhabitants of the Old Town and those of the New Town, 1 May 1654.

Resort Era

In 1866, Beach Road was constructed across Great Marsh, providing access to the town's five miles (8 km) of pristine beach. It developed into a thriving summer resort, lined with hotels, restaurants, shops, cottages, arcades and amusement parks. A carousel called The Flying Horses, hand carved by Charles I. D. Looff, was installed in 1914. John Miller built The Sky Rocket, the beach's first roller coaster. A Dodgem ride, originally built by Max and Harold Stoeher of Methuen, operated at Salisbury Beach in one form or another from 1920 to 1980. Major entertainers provided concerts, including Glenn Miller, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra and Liberace.

The resort remained vibrant through the 1960s, then gradually faded. WildCat, the last roller coaster, was razed in 1976. Pirate's Fun Park, the last small amusement park, closed in 2004 to be replaced with condominiums.

Due to climate change, Salisbury's coastline has begun rapidly eroding. In March of 2024, several beachfront residents had paid $565,000 for artificial sand dunes as protection for the beachfront houses, only for it to be washed away within three days following a severe storm.