Amesbury's Summer Belongs to the River Again

The stretch of Merrimack behind the Lower Millyard used to be something you drove past on the way to Salisbury or the highway. This summer it is where the town is eating dinner. A new restaurant opened on the water in June, the Thursday concerts downtown are drawing bigger crowds than the amphitheater has seen in years, and the farms on the outskirts have quietly built a festival calendar that runs from strawberries in June to cider in October.

If you have lived in Amesbury for a decade or two, the shape of summer here is familiar: Amesbury Days, fireworks at Woodsom Farm, a Cider Hill run for peaches. What is new is where the center of gravity sits. The waterfront, long treated as a marina with a view, is finally acting like the town's living room. Everything else in this guide bends toward that shift.

The waterfront

The most consequential summer opening in years happened on June 19, when Marker 34 began serving on the Amesbury waterfront. Northshore Magazine described it as an elevated coastal restaurant developed with roots in the Healey family's long ties to the town, with a seasonal New England menu built around the river view. Early diners on OpenTable have flagged two things worth knowing before you go: the deck and bar are first-come, first-served rather than reservable, and the indoor room runs loud on a full night. Both are signals of demand, not problems. If you want a table on the water for sunset, arrive before six.

Marker 34 matters beyond its own menu because it changes how the rest of the waterfront reads. The Amesbury Riverwalk Trail, which begins near 35 Water Street, is no longer just a walk that ends at parked boats. The Amesbury Carriage Museum uses that same trailhead for its guided rides down the historic Riverwalk with Pedalin' Fools doing free bike safety checks, and the Powow River side of the millyard now has a reason to linger after dark. Walk the trail, eat on the water, walk back. That sequence did not exist in Amesbury a year ago.

Thursdays are the standing appointment

The 2026 Amesbury Summer Series runs Thursday evenings from 6:00 to 8:00 PM at the Upper Millyard Amphitheater, free, family-friendly, framed by the old mill buildings and the Powow. The lineup that is still to come this year:

• July 30 — Gemstones, a North Shore classic rock staple
• August 6 — Coast Wise Radio, a New England acoustic group leaning folk and Americana
• August 13 — Lee Biddle, a local singer-songwriter mixing originals with rock and modern covers
• August 20 — Sierra and Andrew, an Amesbury duo who have been performing together for more than a decade
• August 27 — Rock the House, closing the series

A lawn chair, a blanket, whatever you want to bring in a cooler. The amphitheater sits a five-minute walk from Main Street, which means you can pair the show with dinner at NuNaMi Bistro at 31 Main for Thai and Southeast Asian, or grab a burger at Crave a block over on Elm. Neither requires a car move between courses and music.

The farms have built a parallel calendar

If the millyard is the town's evening scene, the farms on the western edge are the daytime one, and their programming this summer has gotten notably more ambitious. Cider Hill Farm's Blueberry & Flower Fest runs two full weekends this year, July 18–19 and July 25–26, with hard cider bars, live music, hayrides, food trucks, and pick-your-own blueberries and cut flowers. A first-annual Cherry Festival landed on July 3, which is the sort of addition that only makes sense if last year's Strawberry Festival crowd told the farm to keep going.

Battis Farm hosts a Trails & Sails Star Party on the evening of September 18, which is worth putting on the calendar now because parking there fills faster than people expect. And the Amesbury Carriage Museum has an annual Driving Through History fundraiser on September 25 that turns the Industrial History Center into a Prohibition-era speakeasy, complete with live jazz, cocktails, and a nod to Amesbury's early automotive history. That last one is a good marker of how the museum has repositioned itself over the last few years, from a static local history stop into an evening venue that programs against the season.

The pattern across all of this is worth naming: Amesbury's institutions are no longer competing with each other for the same Saturday afternoon. The farms own daylight. The millyard owns evenings. The waterfront owns dinner. A resident with a full weekend can hit all three without doubling back.

A weekend you could actually assemble this month

For the reader who wants a specific plan rather than a menu of options, one workable July shape:

1. Friday evening. Walk from Main Street down to the water, eat early on the Marker 34 deck before the wait builds, then loop the Riverwalk Trail on the way back.
2. Saturday morning. Cider Hill for the Blueberry & Flower Fest opener, pick a flat of berries, stay for the hayride if the kids are in.
3. Saturday evening. Blue Moon Kitchen & Bar or Barking Dog on the porch if you want something familiar, or drive out to a beach fireworks show, since Hampton Beach runs a display over the ocean every Wednesday in summer weather permitting and Salisbury Beach pairs Saturday live music at the Oceanfront Stage with a beachfront show at 7:30.
4. Sunday. BareWolf Brewing has been the low-key anchor of the artist block near The Center art studio for a while now, and Sunday afternoon there is the closest thing Amesbury has to a neighborhood porch.

None of this requires a reservation more than a few days out except Marker 34 for interior seating on a Friday. It is a summer you can actually live in without planning three weeks ahead.

Where the locals fill in the gaps

A few smaller notes worth carrying:

• NuNaMi Bistro opened downtown in early 2026 and has become the sleeper favorite for a weeknight. The crab curry and khao soi kai are the two dishes reviewers keep circling back to.
• Crave, at 32 Elm Street, is worth understanding as an institution rather than a restaurant. Owner Sean Toomey started at Busy Bee Pizza at sixteen and came back to buy Crave in 2013 after seven years running Flatbread's Bedford location. That kind of continuity is why the room feels the way it does on a Wednesday.
• The Rocky Hill Meeting House hosts a bi-weekly self-guided meditation hour that is one of the quieter things you can do in town, in a building that has been sitting there since the 18th century.
• Amesbury Public Library partners with Heron Pond Farm and The Center for a running series of family science and art nights through the summer. Good option for the weekend when the beach traffic is impossible.

The through line: the town has more programmed hours in a summer week than it did five years ago, and the programming is coordinated enough that you can actually chain events together instead of choosing between them.

The takeaway for a longtime resident

If you moved here in 2015 and have not adjusted your summer routine, you are missing the best parts. The waterfront is worth walking after dinner. The Thursday concert series is worth building a standing plan around. The farms are worth two visits, not one. Amesbury has spent the last few years quietly upgrading its public evening life, and this is the first summer where you can feel all of it in the same weekend.

When you are ready to talk about how those changes are showing up in home values along the Powow and the river corridor, or you want an honest read on your own property in the middle of a market that is rewarding walkable Amesbury more than it did a decade ago, Cheryl Grant is available for a private conversation. Get Your Instant Home Valuation on the site as a starting point, and reach out when you want the local read behind the number.