About MassTotes
If you grew up in Massachusetts, you know the sign. Arched across the top, the state seal in the middle, and the word ENTERING over a town name you've read a thousand times from the back seat. It's how you knew you were almost home, or that the drive to the Cape was finally getting somewhere.
MassTotes was born out of that familiar nostalgia.
The quirks are the best part
The arched "bookleaf" sign dates back to the early 1930s, when the state designed it to stand out from every other sign on the road. The first ones were plywood on concrete posts. They've been replaced one road at a time ever since, so no two look quite alike: the lettering, spacing, and weathering shift a little from place to place.
The dates wander too. Signs use a town's official incorporation date unless the town asks for its earlier establishment date instead, so the same town might read INC. on one road and EST. on another. And every so often you pass two of them within a few hundred feet of each other, a sure sign you've just clipped the corner of a town without ever really being in it.
What we make
Heavyweight 12 oz. 100% cotton canvas totes, each one hand-pressed in Worcester with the classic entering sign for one of Massachusetts' 351 cities and towns. Every bag is pressed to order and ships within 3 business days.
A sense of place, sign or no sign
Plenty of places that matter don't have an entering sign of their own: villages, neighborhoods, beaches, the stretch of road where you spent every summer. We love customizing the classic sign for those places, so you can carry a sense of where you live, where you grew up, or a spot you just love.