Decorative drawing: a small American settlement seen from a low hill. Not a photograph of this place.

Bedford, Massachusetts

48 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1886 and the latest in 1989. It stands in Bedford town. It lies in ZIP code area 01730. It stands on Elm Brook. The Survey maps it on the Concord quadrangle.

Bedford within Middlesex County

Then and now

1886 to 1989

The same ground, surveyed 103 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.

Topographic sheet of Bedford, surveyed 1989

Topographic sheet of Bedford, surveyed 1886

Topographic sheets covering this place

48 sheets

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.

What happened here

An account from the chapter on Bedford town, in the words of 1908.

1908, Bedford Town

Biographical

The subject of this sketch was born in Salem, Mass., May 7, 1820, in a house on the opposite corner to the one in which White was murdered by the Kuappa and Crowninshield. In 1821 his parents removed to Moultonborough, N. H., where they lived a few years, and William was sent to the village school for a brief term.

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Fires nearby

34 since 1992

The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 34 fires within 5 miles of Bedford between 1992 and 2020, burning about 26 acres in total. 1 started naturally. None 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.

Reported cause	Fires
Debris and open burning	18
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	12
Recreation and ceremony	2
Other causes	1
Natural	1

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

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
5 September 2020	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
22 September 2020	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
1 September 2001	Natural	under an acre	Minute Man National Historical Park	FISKEHILL
26 August 2020	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
17 August 2015	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
6 June 2020	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
4 June 2020	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
25 June 2020	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Middlesex County

Specimens collected nearby

12 of 1,202 shown

Museums hold 1,202 specimens collected within 10 miles of Bedford between 1898 and 1975: 512 Animalia, 418 Plantae, 243 Fungi, 9 Bacteria, 8 Chromista, 7 Unrecorded, 5 Protozoa. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by ?, A. B. Seymour, A. B. Seymour & M. D. Feigley and others. Each is a physical object with a catalogue number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be concluded from a species being absent.

Species	Year	Collected by	Where, as recorded
Corvus brachyrhynchos brachyrhynchos C.L.Brehm, 1822	1900	not recorded	Wayland
Trientalis borealis Raf.	1900	A. P. Chute
Aglaospora profusa (Fr.) De Not.	1898	Collector unspecified
Boletus griseus Frost	1898	H. Webster
Cladonia rangiferina (L.) Weber	1898	Francis P Daniels	Arlington Heights
Cordyceps capitata (Holmsk.) Link	1898	Conant, [?] F.	Middlesex Fells
Ctenidium malacodes Mitt.	1898	not recorded
Cucurbitaria elongata (Fr.) Grev.	1898	J. G. Hall
Agaricus brunnescens Peck	1900	Morris, G. E.	Waltham
Aphanochaete repens A.Braun	1900	F. S. Collins	Middlesex Fells, Wright's Pond, on Oedogonium, etc.
Araiospora pulchra Thaxt.	1900	Thaxter, Roland	Stony Brook, Mass. [Massachusetts]
Batrachospermum gelatinosum (L.) DC.	1900	F.S. Collins	Malden

All 1,202 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Mines and quarries nearby

10 within 5 miles

The federal mineral resources record lists 10 workings within 5 miles of Bedford: 6 past producers, 2 producers, 1 occurrence, 1 plant. 3 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Copper, Titanium. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
Dynamet Tech--Burlington, Ma.	Titanium	Plant
Carlisle Deposit	Copper	Occurrence
Cu Prospect	Copper	Past Producer
Burlington S & G Co., Inc. Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Burlington Sand and Gravel	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer	Sedimentary
D R Raymond	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer	Sedimentary
Joseph Roberto Inc	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer	Sedimentary
Joseph Roberto Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Quinn-Perkins Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Thomas Quinn Co Inc	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer	Sedimentary

Every working recorded in Middlesex County

Storms nearby

5 since 1999

The National Weather Service names Bedford in 5 storm reports between 1999 and 2020: 3 thunderstorm wind, 2 lightning. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
July 2006	Lightning	Bedford	$215,000	no account filed
July 2014	Thunderstorm Wind	Bedford	$100,000	A powerful microburst occurred in Bedford with estimated 90 to 100 mph wind gusts. Approximately 50 to 70 trees were blown down, most of them healthy pine trees 100 feet tall. The trees were blown down, snapped at least halfway up, or uprooted. Eight trees fell onto houses causing significant damage. On Hilltop Drive and Hemlock Lane alone, more than two dozen pine trees were knocked down.
July 2008	Thunderstorm Wind	Bedford	$5,000	Trees on Wiggins Avenue and wires on Alpha Circle were downed by thunderstorm winds.
July 2020	Thunderstorm Wind	Bedford	$2,000	In Bedford, a tree was down on a house on Hartford Street.
July 1999	Lightning	Bedford	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Middlesex County

Nearest settlements

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

Place	Distance	Sheets
Bedford Springs	1.8 miles	41
West Bedford	2.3 miles	48
South Billerica	2.6 miles	41
North Lexington	2.8 miles	46
Nutting Lake	3.3 miles	41
Meriams Corner	3.3 miles	48
Woods Corner	3.5 miles	46
Riverside	3.5 miles	41

Provenance

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 611761. 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.

Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.

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.

Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.