Ray, Arizona

Matched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.

• 1910 USGS Ray quadrangle1:62500, 3 printings
• 1954 USGS Mesa quadrangle1:250000, 4 printings
• 1957 USGS Mesa quadrangle1:250000
• 1958 USGS Mesa quadrangle1:250000
• 1960 USGS Mesa quadrangle1:250000
• 1964 USGS Hot Tamale Peak quadrangle1:24000
• 1964 USGS Mesa quadrangle1:250000
• 1964 USGS Sonora quadrangle1:24000, 2 printings
• 1986 USGS Globe quadrangle1:100000, 2 printings

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 35 fires within 5 miles of Ray between 1992 and 2020, burning about 4,639 acres in total. 10 started naturally. 1 was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

• Sonora
• Kelvin
• Ray Junction
• Troy
• Riverside

Every fire recorded in Pinal County

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 57 workings within 5 miles of Ray: 20 past producers, 14 producers, 11 occurrences, 11 prospects. 14 still produce. What was taken out: Copper, Gold, Silver, Gold, Gold, Silver. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Every working recorded in Pinal County

1 paper published in this town, digitised by the Library of Congress and free to read: 274 issues, 1,138 pages. Every page is searchable, so a name or a street can be looked for directly in what the town printed about itself at the time.

Front pages of the local paper, read from the Library of Congress scans: 6 issues spread across its run from 1915 to 1920, 18,352 words in total. Each is reproduced on its own page, exactly as the recogniser returned it.

These pages read less well than anything else here, and the number is worth stating: about three words in four come through cleanly, against nine in ten for the building records. An 1896 broadsheet sets eight-point type in seven columns on microfilm, which is the hardest thing in this archive to read by machine. We tested our own recognisers against the Library's and they were not better, so the Library's text is what appears, with the wholly unreadable columns removed. Read it as a guide to what the paper covered, and follow the link to the scan before quoting anything.

The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.

Matched on this settlement's Geographic Names Information System number rather than its name, so it cannot be a different place of the same name in another state.

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 33415. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.

Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.

Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.