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

Chilmark, Massachusetts

33 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1887 and the latest in 1994. It stands in Chilmark town. It lies in ZIP code area 02535. It sits by Wequobsque Cliffs. The Survey maps it on the Tisbury Great Pond quadrangle. 1,212 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 92 feet above sea level.

Chilmark within Dukes County

Population over time

2 figures

Chilmark grew from 866 to 1,212 between 2010 and 2020. These are the recorded population figures Wikidata holds for this place, reached through the Geographic Names Information System number this page is keyed on rather than by name, so they belong to this place and not to another of the same name. Most are census counts, but not all are: an early figure may be a founding or settlement estimate. The change column is computed, and is left blank where more than 20 years separate a figure from the one before it, because a gap that long is not a change between two counts.

YearPeople Change
2010866
20201,212+346 (+40%)

Then and now

1887 to 1994

The same ground, surveyed 107 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.

Topographic sheet of Chilmark, surveyed 1994
Topographic sheet of Chilmark, surveyed 1887

Topographic sheets covering this place

33 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.

In the county-history sources

24,949 words on this township

The History of Martha's Vineyard, Dukes County, Massachusetts, published 1911 names this settlement in its chapter on Chilmark Town. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

This name is first given to the Manor of Tisbury in a deed from Thomas Mayhew to Daniel Stewart, March 26, 1680, where Mayhew calls himself "of the town of Chilmark in the Manor of Tysbery." It is mentioned in another deed under date of April 1, 1693, and appears on Simon Athearn's map of 1694. The reason for the bestowal of this name is found in its relation to the Mayhew family at the time Thomas Mayhew lived in the adjoining parish of Tisbury. It was undoubtedly found that confusion arose from the use of the names of Tisbury Manor and Tisbury, a condition which Mayhew remedied by reviving the old familiar title of one of the ancestral homes of his family.

Passage source: The History of Martha's Vineyard, Dukes County, Massachusetts, published 1911.

Chilmark was the last of the three original towns to become settled, and it is not until toward the end of the 1 7th century that any appreciable population resided in its limits.^ By reference to the genealogies of the families known to have been living here in 1700, a total of 73 persons can be counted at that date. This makes no account of "others" who may have been here in the capacity of teachers, servants or laborers on the farms, exclusive of Indians. Perhaps ten or a dozen more, at the outside, would cover this class of transient residents. That Chilmark increased more rapidly than the other towns in population in this century is known from taxation and valuation lists, but no definite statistics are available

Passage source: The History of Martha's Vineyard, Dukes County, Massachusetts, published 1911.

Chilmark has had an irregular but steady decrease in population since 1800, although the two towns of Gosnold and Gay Head were formed from this population, which in a large measure accounts for losses since i860. The state census of 1905 showed a population of 322.

Passage source: The History of Martha's Vineyard, Dukes County, Massachusetts, published 1911.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Chilmark Town - it names this place 82 more 82 times.

Fires near this place

1 since 2018

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 1 fire within 5 miles of Chilmark between 2018 and 2018, burning about 0 acres in total. None 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 burning1

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

DateCause SizeReported by Name on the report
21 April 2018Debris and open burningunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Dukes County

Specimens collected near this place

12 of 6,462 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. Museums hold 6,462 specimens collected within 10 miles of Chilmark between 1828 and 1975: 5,052 Animalia, 1,007 Plantae, 173 Chromista, 168 Unrecorded, 44 Fungi, 16 Bacteria, 2 Protozoa. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A AND P STARRETT, A., A. B. Hervey 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.

Image SpeciesYear Collected by Where, as recorded
A photograph of the species Tipularia discolor, not of this specimenTipularia discolor (Pursh) Nutt.1828OakesMartha's Vineyard
A photograph of the species Acteocina canaliculata, not of this specimenActeocina canaliculata (Say, 1826)1871United States Fish CommissionOff Gay Head
A photograph of the species Actinococcus subcutaneus, not of this specimenActinococcus subcutaneus (Lyngbye ex Hornemann) Rosenvinge1871W. G. FarlowGay Head
A photograph of the species Alitta succinea, not of this specimenAlitta succinea (Leuckart, 1847)1871U.S. Fish CommissionNaushon Island
A photograph of the species Anguilla rostrata, not of this specimenAnguilla rostrata (Lesueur, 1817)1871U.S. Fish CommissionVineyard Sound
A photograph of the species Astarte crenata, not of this specimenAstarte crenata (J.E.Gray, 1824)1871United States Fish CommissionOff Gay Head and Edgartown
A photograph of the species Astyris lunata, not of this specimenAstyris lunata (Say, 1826)1871United States Fish CommissionGreat Harbor, Gay Head [=Aquinnah]
Callithamnion plumula (J.Ellis) Lyngbye1871W. G. FarlowMartha's Vineyard, Gay Head
A photograph of the species Chaetomorpha linum, not of this specimenChaetomorpha linum (O.F.Müll.) Kütz.1871W. G. FarlowMartha's Vineyard, Gay Head
A photograph of the species Centropristis striata, not of this specimenCentropristis striata (Linnaeus, 1758)1899B. BeanMenemsha Bight
A photograph of the species Echinorhynchus Zoega, not of this specimenEchinorhynchus Zoega, 17761899E. LintonMartha's Vineyard
A photograph of the species Microtus breweri, not of this specimenMicrotus breweri (Baird, 1857)1899BANGS, O.MUSKEGET IS

All 6,462 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Storms near this place

3 since 2009

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Chilmark in 3 storm reports between 2009 and 2017: 2 thunderstorm wind, 1 flood. 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.

WhenEvent Place namedHarm What the report says
November 2014Thunderstorm WindChilmark$5,000A large tree was downed blocking Menemsha Inn Road in Chilmark.
July 2009Thunderstorm WindChilmark$1,000A tree on North Road was downed by thunderstorm winds.
July 2017FloodChilmark-At 1226 PM EST, significant street flooding was reported on State Road in Chilmark, between Catherine's Way and Millbrook Road.

Every storm recorded in Dukes 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.

Map PlaceDistance Sheets
Menemsha1.2 miles33
Nashaquitsa2.0 miles33
Lobsterville2.8 miles33
Squibnocket2.9 miles33
Gay Head3.7 miles33
Indian Lands3.8 miles33
Nabs Corner3.9 miles34
Quansoo4.4 miles34

Elsewhere

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.

Wikipedia article on ChilmarkAn encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q2302305The structured record the population and elevation above come from. Public domain (CC0).

Provenance

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 614981. 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.

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.