Salem, Massachusetts, isn’t filed with toil and trouble, at least not anymore. It is a place best known for witches, but as one of the oldest communities in America, there’s more to Salem’s history.
Salem was one of the earliest American settlements and has been a place of critical seaport trade since the early 1600s. While tourists mostly come for the witches, there’s much more unique about this early American town, like historic residential neighborhoods, including the House of Seven Gables, Pioneer Village, the Salem Maritime National Historic Site, and the Peabody Essex Museum. Before that, it was home to the Naumkeag Native Americans, who lived there for thousands of years before European colonization.
Salem History of Witches
Still, if any town has a theme, it’s this one. I’ve been to Salem twice, once recently during my nearly two-year-long solo road trip and another time several years ago. Dare I say it’s gotten more witchy in the intervening years? It’s one of few places where you’ll know the theme without anyone telling you – something to do with witches, right? The school teams are the “Witches,” and one school is named “Witchcraft Heights.” Some police cars have witch logos on them. Of course, there’s the witch museum, the memorial, the house and many witch-themed businesses.
Still, instead of feeling kitschy, it’s fun to visit. However, fun may not be the right word for a place with such powerful mental imagery – the one that killed innocent people in a three-month assault on morality. Of course, those people weren’t witches at all, which makes the story more tragic, macabre, and a little bit unbelievable.
The most historic parts of Salem history are walkable, and despite its grim past, it’s a charming place to spend the day walking to many of the historic sites. Here are a few places you’ll want to see too.
Getting to Salem
This time I drove, but last time I took a train from Boston. Parking in the heart of Salem is hard to come by, so one of these alternatives would be a good choice.
- The train from Boston to Salem takes about 30 minutes and runs hourly. It costs only about $15 round trip. Don’t do what I did and get off at the wrong stop! Then I had to wait 15 minutes for a Lyft and pay another $10. Bah!
- Take the No. 450 Haymarket bus from Boston to Salem Depot. It takes about an hour but costs only about $5.
- Water ferry: The Salem Ferry at Boston Harbor takes about 50 minutes on a high-speed catamaran for about $28 each way. It’s easy to get a taxi or car from the harbor to downtown, but it’s also walkable.
- Taxi or ride share is another option since it’s only a 30-minute drive. It will be the priciest option – probably $50+ each way.
Essex Street
I was hungry, so I began my visit by finding a parking spot near Essex Street. It’s in the historic center and a good place to start. This is the place for you if you need smudging sage, herbs, rune stones or books on witchcraft.
Essex Street is home to a few eccentric museums and several witch-themed small businesses, ahem, apothecaries, that are fun to browse. It’s also where I picked up my local Witches Union card. Just kidding, it’s only a sticker and I bought several for friends. If it’s the weekend, you’ll likely see street performers and many tourists too.
Salem Maritime National Historic Site
The Salem Maritime National Historic Site was the first National Historic Site in the United States. It was established in 1938 and includes a visitor’s center, nine acres of land and twelve historic structures along the Salem waterfront. It’s a great place to begin your exploration of Salem history. Helpful signs will guide and inform you.
Blaney Street Wharf
Salem’s historic waterfront is worth spending a bit of time strolling too. It’s also where the ferry docks if you’ve traveled via water.
While there, stop by the historic Derby Wharf lighthouse. This unique little square lighthouse is just twelve feet square and about 20 feet high. It’s been in the Salem Maritime National Historic Site since 1871 and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Fun fact: An oil lamp was the original power for the light. I’m willing to bet it was whale oil.
The houses along the waterfront belonged to wealthy merchants with goods coming in on ships. It’s a nice walk from the wharf to one of the town’s most famous homes.
The House of the Seven Gables
I’m a huge book lover, so when I travel, I often visit homes and places my favorite authors lived or wrote about. I hadn’t read the “House of the Seven Gables,” a gothic romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne, before I arrived, but I’d read “The Scarlet Letter.” The House of Seven Gables – with you guessed it: seven gables – features a mysterious place with a suspicious past, witchcraft, the supernatural and death.
The house also has Salem history. The House of Seven Gables dates to 1668, when the Turner family built it. They lived there for three generations before the relatives of Hawthorne and later Hawthorne moved in.
“You are partly crazy, and partly imbecile; a ruin, a failure, as almost everybody is, –though some in less degree, or less perceptibly, than their fellows.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables
The house is open for guided tours daily for $25, or you can buy a grounds pass for $12. I highly recommend the interior tour, as you won’t find many houses like it because of its age. Inside, there are many small rooms and the ceilings are all quite low – I’m only 5’ 2” and I found them short! But the most exciting part is the opening behind the fireplace that leads to a secret room upstairs! If you are claustrophobic, the staircase will give you pause.
Statue of Nathaniel Hawthorne
Because of his publishing fame, the city honored Hawthorne with a statue in the town center. But plenty of famous historical figures were born or lived in Salem, including Alexander Graham Bell’s renowned assistant, Thomas Watson; Colonel Timothy Pickering, the third U.S. Secretary of State under Presidents George Washington and John Adams; and American Impressionist painter Frank Benso.
Hawthorne was considered America’s first great romantic novelist and while in Salem, he met his wife, Sophia Amelia Peabody. The two would go on to live in another famous house several miles away in Concord.
1692 Salem Witch Trials
But you’re probably visiting for the witches, right? As a teenager, I absolutely would have been burned at the stake. Some might even say I’m still a witch as I tend to burn sage as needed, collect stones, honor the moon and often visit cemeteries.
Salem history is predominantly known for the Salem witch trials of 1692 when over three months, the townspeople hung 14 women and five men and pressed one man to death. I can’t even imagine what that entails and don’t want to.
Fun Fact: The name Salem comes from the Hebrew word for peace: Shalom.
Salem Witch Museum
You can learn all about the witch trials at the Salem Witch Museum. The best part about this museum is the building. It’s a brownstone-and-brick Gothic Revival church, or former church, which is fitting.
The museum has two presentations. The first is a 45-minute recorded narration, including life-size dioramas or stage sets that take the captive audience through the horrors of 1962 Salem. During the presentation, angry white men pointing fingers at terrified young women feature prominently. It might not be great for children.
After the presentation, visitors are released into the rest of the museum. The exhibits feature other witch trials and hunts and explore what it means to be a “witch” throughout the ages and elsewhere.
Roger Conant Statue
Outside the Salem Witch Museum, you’ll see a statue that many mistake for a witch. It’s a tall figure cloaked in a dark cape with a tall, odd-shaped hat. It’s not a witch, though; it’s Salem founder Roger Conant.
Conant was a settler in the Plymouth colony in 1624 before leading a small band of followers to an outlying area on Native American land, later named Salem.
Salem’s Old Burying Point Cemetery
After the innocent people of Salem were murdered, some were buried in the “Old Burying Point Cemetery” alongside the judges who wrongly convicted them. Also known as Charter Street Cemetery, it was founded in 1637 and is among the oldest cemeteries in the United States. It features many old granite tombstone graves carved with a skull with wings, called death’s heads or winged death, amid craggy trees.
Fun fact: A skull with wings represents the fleeting nature of life.
Witch Trials Memorial
Next to the cemetery is an open space with granite benches built into a rock wall. You’ll see names, engravings and flowers left on the benches in memory of those killed in the Salem Witch Trials. The twenty benches honor the twenty innocent victims.
The benches each display a name and execution date. The victims’ pleas of innocence are also inscribed on the ground nearby but cut off mid-sentence to symbolize their oppression.
Next door is the Pickman House, built in the late 1600s; it likely provided the residents with a bird’s eye view of the aftermath of the executions.
The Witch House
Despite the controversy and interest for over 300 years, no existing buildings directly associated with the Salem witch trials exist, except this one. “The Witch House” on the corner of Essex and North Streets is the only structure with actual “witch” history. It was the home of Judge Jonathan Corwin in 1692. Corwin is one judge who presided over the witch trials. Some of the examinations were likely held there. He later became known as the “hanging judge” for the sentences he gave out.
The house became a museum in 1948. You can go inside and feel the evil in its old, black wood. A guided tour costs about $10.
Whatever your reason, exploring Salem is a trip worth your time.
Read other stories about Massachusetts here.
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