Carlisle, Massachusetts

Carlisle is an affluent, rural town northwest of Boston, located in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. English colonialists first settled the area comprising the town of Carlisle in 1651 on parcels of land of the neighboring towns of Acton, Billerica, Chelmsford and Concord. Carlisle became a district of Concord in 1780 and was officially incorporated as a town in 1805.

Carlisle contains a library, a country store, a dentist’s office, an automated teller machine and many residential buildings. Kimball Farms is an ice-cream store fairly well known in the state of Massachusetts. On the east end of town there is an auto body shop. The town newspaper, the Carlisle Mosquito, has appeared as the weekly independent newspaper of the town since 1972. The paper includes local news, announcements and logs.

Carlisle is located about eight miles south-southwest of Lowell and 19 miles northwest of Boston. It borders the towns of Concord, Acton, Westford, Chelmsford, Billerica and Bedford. According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 15.5 square miles, of which 15.4 square miles is land and 0.2 square miles is water. Conservation land makes up about a quarter of the town’s area. Besides town-owned land overseen by the town’s conservation committee, Carlisle is home to Great Brook Farm State Park and a portion of the Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge neighboring the Concord River.