Cape Ann, © R. Terry Walker/The Picture Cubecape on the Atlantic Ocean comprising the eastern extremity of Essex county, northeastern Massachusetts, U.S., 30 miles (48 km) northeast of Boston. Sheltering Ipswich Bay, it is indented by Annisquam Harbor on the north and Gloucester Harbor on the south. The tidal Annisquam River, a 4-mile- (6.4-km-) long navigable waterway, connects the two harbours. The cape also shelters the northern part of Massachusetts Bay, which extends south to Cape Cod.
The rocky, picturesque promontory, named for Queen Anne (wife of the British king James I), is noted for its quaint old fishing villages, resorts, and artists’ colonies. Gloucester and Rockport (site of “Motif No. 1,” an ancient fishing shed that has been the subject of many photographs and paintings) are the main towns. Norman’s Woe, a reef off the cape’s east coast, has been the scene of numerous shipwrecks, and it is the setting of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “The Wreck of the Hesperus.” Halibut Point forms Cape Ann’s northernmost tip.