Located roughly halfway up Buzzard's Bay between New Bedford and Buzzard's Bay Canal, Mattapoisett has long been a stopover for cruising boaters and summer residents alike. The history of Mattapoisett Harbor is traced back to the Wampanoag Native Americans and means "place of rest." Before the area was settled by the English, Native Americans built summer villages here and at the heads of harbors around modern-day Buzzard's Bay.

The harbor was a major ship-building hub for much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, producing an estimated 400-600 vessels which were used primarily for whaling and fishing.