Newburyport, Massachusetts  Newburyport is a small coastal, scenic, and historic city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States, northeast of Boston. The population was 17,416 at the 2010 census. A historic seaport with a vibrant tourism industry, Newburyport includes part of Plum Island. Plum Island consists of its own history as well. The mooring, winter storage and maintenance of recreational boats, motor and sail, still contribute a large part of the city's income. A Coast Guard station oversees boating activity, especially in the sometimes dangerous tidal currents of the Merrimack River. At the edge of the Newbury Marshes, delineating Newburyport to the south, an industrial park provides a wide range of jobs. Newburyport is on a major north-south highway, Interstate 95. The outer circumferential highway of Boston, Interstate 495, passes nearby in Amesbury. The Newburyport Turnpike (U.S. Route 1) still traverses Newburyport on its way north. The Newburyport/Rockport MBTA commuter rail from Boston's North Station terminates in Newburyport. The earlier Boston and Maine Railroad leading farther north was discontinued, but a portion of it has been converted into a recreation trail. On January 28, 1764, the General Court of Massachusetts passed "An act for erecting part of the town of Newbury into a new town by the name of Newburyport." The act begins:Whereas the town of Newbury is very large, and the inhabitants of that part of it who dwell by the water-side there, as it is commonly called, are mostly merchants, traders and artificers, and the inhabitants of the other parts of the town are chiefly husbandmen; by means whereof many difficulties and disputes have arisen in managing their public affairs – Be it enacted ... That that part of the said town of Newbury ... be and hereby are constituted and made a separate and distinct town ... The act was approved by Governor Francis Bernard on February 4, 1764. The new town was the smallest in Massachusetts, covering an area of , and had a population of 2,800 living in 357 homes. There were three shipyards, no bridges, and several ferries, one of which at the foot of Greenleaf Lane, now State Street, carried the Portsmouth Flying Stage Coach, running between Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Boston. The town prospered and became a city in 1851. Situated near the mouth of the Merrimack River, it was once a fishing, shipbuilding and shipping center, with an industry in silverware manufacture.