By air, land and sea: Worcester girl visits all 351 MA city and town halls in 1 year

WORCESTER ― There are 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts, and one Worcester elementary school student has managed to already visit each and every one of them.

Ciara Barber, a 9-year-old who attends Rice Square Elementary, visited Gosnold Town Hall July 1, completing a trip that began exactly one year before.

The idea to visit every city and town hall in Massachusetts started when Ciara's uncle, Adam Barber, noticed a lottery advertisement last year that stated that Massachusetts had 351 municipalities. Impressed by the number of cities and towns, he compiled a list of them in a spreadsheet. Looking for a summer activity for Ciara, her mother, Blue Barber, decided it would be fun to try and visit the city or town hall in every single one of them.

"He didn't believe that there were that many cities and towns," Ciara (pronounced KEY-ar-a) said. "So I thought it would be fun to try and visit them."

"I remember having to get in the car with my siblings in the summer and our parents would drive us around to like, Gettysburg, and I felt like that it would be interesting to do that as an adult (with my kid)," Blue Barber said.

The mission began July 1, 2023, at Worcester City Hall. That was followed by the town halls in Leicester and Spencer, and would gradually swell to all of the surrounding communities of Worcester. Almost all of the towns and cities were completed through day trips, although the group did squeeze in a camping trip in Lee while visiting Berkshire County and a beach day while visiting Salisbury.

Out of the 351 city and town halls Ciara visited, the first Worcester, was one of her favorites, although she also had praise for Swansea and Erving's town halls.

"Worcester and Boston were really cool, they had architecture that looked very nice," Ciara said. "They all look very different and have their own personalities. We saw Swansea, which was one of my favorites, because it looked kind of like a stone castle; it was very pretty, very beautiful. Erving also has nice architecture — it kind of looks like a big brick."

Being based in Worcester (The Heart of the Commonwealth!) allowed for relatively easy access to most cities and towns in Massachusetts, but a few proved to be particularly challenging.

Gosnold, the smallest town in Massachusetts by population, with just 70 residents according to the 2020 Census, is only accessible via ferry from New Bedford, which made it the last town on the trip.

"The owners of the Cuttyhunk Ferry Company were really nice; they donated tickets to us to get us there, since it's fairly expensive to get out there," Adam Barber said.

The checklist only consisted of official cities and towns, so communities like Whitinsville, which is a village in Northbridge, were not considered part of the trip.

"There are over 2,000 census-designated places in Massachusetts...I don't think any of us would have survived the car trip if that was the case," Adam Barber said.

In total, the group logged more than 7,000 miles of driving over the course of the trip, hitting up as many as 25 cities and towns in one day.

Blue has been documenting the journey on the Instagram page @town.hall.project, which has attracted a following, and other media articles at Ciara's journey made her a guest of honor at different municipal buildings across the state.

"It was really nice. It was the first time that something like that has really happened to me," Ciara said.

The attention from the Instagram account even got the Barbers a donated flight to Martha's Vineyard courtesy of Cape Air, which flew them out of Boston.

"It was my first time ever being in a small plane," Barber said. "That one was the coolest of all. We got on the plane and then we got Starbucks."

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: How a Worcester girl visited all 351 city and town halls in Mass.