Salisbury is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 8,283 at the 2010 census. The community is a popular summer resort beach town situated on the Atlantic Ocean, north of Boston on the New Hampshire border.

Parts of town comprise the census-designated place of Salisbury.

This was once territory of the Pentucket tribe of Pennacook Indians. It was settled by the English in 1638 as Colchester, and incorporated in 1640 as Salisbury, after Salisbury in Wiltshire, England. The original roads at the center of the town formed a compact semicircle, which allowed the residents to quickly reach the garrison house in case of attack. Those roads still exist, though the shape today is triangular, being bounded by Elm Street, School Street and Bridge Road. One of the two greatest fears at the time was the Naumkeag tribe of Indians, thus the men of the town took turns standing watch against a surprise attack, especially at night. The Naumkeags, however, had been decimated by plague, and the threat was not what it once might have been. The second threat came from wolves, which were plentiful, and which killed the and dug in the graveyard.

The original residents 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.

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