Living in Paxton, MA

About Paxton

Paxton sits on high ground near the center of Worcester County: most of the town lies between 1,000 and 1,200 feet, and Asnebumskit Hill reaches about 1,400 feet, according to the Massachusetts Historical Commission's 1984 survey. The land was part of the Leicester and Rutland grants of 1686 and 1687, and the first confirmed settlers, Josiah and Jason Livermore, worked farms in the southwest from 1748. Paxton was incorporated as a district on February 12, 1765, from nearly equal parts of Leicester and Rutland, and became a town in 1775. It is named for Charles Paxton, marshal of the Admiralty Court, who offered a church bell in return; the bell never came. Through the 1800s the town made boots, and its boot shops' output reached $213,000 in 1875; a fire destroyed the main boot factory in the 1880s, the remaining shops soon closed, and dairying and market gardening carried the town's economy.

No railroad or streetcar ever reached Paxton, so the town grew along its roads: north and south from the meetinghouse, toward Worcester, and out along West and Maple Streets. Paxton Center holds the civic buildings, including the 1888 Town Hall and the 1899 Records Building on Pleasant Street and the Richards Memorial Library, added in 1926. Bungalows went up along West and Pleasant Streets between 1915 and 1940, and the population quadrupled after 1945 as automobile suburbs spread from Worcester. Large tracts went to Worcester's water supply: the Pine Hill and Kettle Brook reservoirs flooded lowland in the northeast and south, and the city owned about 1,590 acres in Paxton for watershed protection at the time of the town's 2003 open space plan. Moore State Park, a 400-acre state property on Sawmill Road, keeps the stone foundations of mills that ran from the 18th to the early 20th century.

Paxton's homes are mostly owner occupied: in the 2000 Census, 94.8% of its 1,428 occupied housing units were owned, according to the town's 2003 Open Space and Recreation Plan, and the state's MBTA Communities table counts 1,689 housing units in 2020. The town adopted a Watershed Protection District in 2001 and later required larger lot sizes, and the 2003 plan noted that about 98% of its land cannot support on-site septic systems for new development. Paxton has run its own municipal light department since 1914. Under the state's MBTA Communities law it is classed as an adjacent small town that must zone for at least 84 multi-family units, and the state lists it as compliant as of October 21, 2026. Anna Maria College, founded in 1946 and based in Paxton, closed at the end of the spring 2026 semester.

Homes in Paxton

Of Paxton's 1,428 occupied housing units in the 2000 Census, 94.8% were owner occupied, according to the town's 2003 Open Space and Recreation Plan. The plan recorded residential land growing 64% over the previous 30 years and an average of 16.6 new residential permits a year since 1995. The older stock, as surveyed by the Massachusetts Historical Commission in 1984, runs from center-chimney Colonial houses to gable-end, side-passage houses of the mid-1800s, mostly in the Center, and bungalows along West and Pleasant Streets from 1915 to 1940.