The North Shore is a region in the U.S. state of Massachusetts, loosely defined as the coastal area between Boston and New Hampshire. The region is made up both of a rocky coastline, dotted with marshes and wetlands, as well as several beaches and natural harbors. The North Shore is an important historical, cultural, and economic region of Massachusetts. The southern part of the region includes several of Boston's densely populated inner suburbs. At the center of the North Shore lies its most prominent geographic feature, Cape Ann, with numerous small fishing towns, and at the northern end lies the Merrimack Valley, which was a major locus of the Industrial Revolution in the United States. It contains the cities of Salem, known worldwide as the site of the Salem witch trials; and Gloucester, site of Charles Olson's The Maximus Poems, and of Sebastian Junger's 1997 creative nonfiction book The Perfect Storm and its 2000 film adaptation. Beverly was home to author John Updike until his death. Salisbury Beach State Reservation, lying within the town of Salisbury, Massachusetts, is a popular beach resort with over 1 million annual visitors. The region also prominently figures in the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne and H. P. Lovecraft, notably the latter's The Shadow over Innsmouth, as well as New England poets T. S. Eliot and Robert Lowell. Martin Scorsese's 2010 feature film Shutter Island, set on a fictional Boston Harbor island, was partly shot on location on the North Shore. Kenneth Lonergan's 2016 film Manchester by the Sea is set in the eponymous seaside town, and major portions of it were filmed in Gloucester, Beverly and other North Shore communities. Sian Heder's 2021 Academy Award-winning feature CODA was set in Gloucester and filmed there, along with other North Shore locations. Definition The North Shore has no fixed definition as a region. It may include only those communities between Boston and Cape Ann, as defined by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (whose purview does not go beyond Greater Boston); or the larger part of Essex County, including parts of the Merrimack Valley, as defined by the North Shore Chamber of Commerce. The Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management, which defines regions in terms of watershed, refers to the North Shore as the coastal region of Massachusetts north of Boston stretching from Salisbury to Revere, including the inland city of Amesbury. Coastal North Shore of Massachusetts could