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

East Walpole, Massachusetts

41 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1886 and the latest in 1989. It stands in Walpole town. It lies in ZIP code area 02032. It stands on Hawes Brook. The Survey maps it on the Norwood quadrangle.

East Walpole within Norfolk 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 East Walpole, surveyed 1989

Topographic sheet of East Walpole, surveyed 1886

Topographic sheets covering this place

41 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.

Fires nearby

174 since 2015

The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 174 fires within 5 miles of East Walpole between 2015 and 2020, burning about 73 acres in total. 1 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.

Reported cause	Fires
Recreation and ceremony	69
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	47
Smoking	42
Debris and open burning	10
Railroad operations and maintenance	2
Equipment and vehicle use	2
Natural	1
Arson/incendiarism	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
9 September 2020	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
9 September 2016	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	DOVER
5 September 2016	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	SHARON
5 September 2016	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	WESTWOOD
26 September 2015	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	SHARON
25 September 2016	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	MEDFIELD
23 September 2015	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	SHARON
22 September 2020	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Norfolk County

Specimens collected nearby

12 of 8,172 shown

Museums hold 8,172 specimens collected within 10 miles of East Walpole between 1832 and 1975: 3,669 Animalia, 2,684 Plantae, 1,633 Fungi, 132 Protozoa, 25 Unrecorded, 24 Chromista, 5 Bacteria. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by ?, A W Cheever, A. A. Eaton 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
Hieracium venosum L.	1900	E. F. Williams	Blue Hills Reservation
Hypoprepia fucosa Hübner, 1831	1900	not recorded	Sherborn
Lysimachia × producta (A.Gray) Fernald	1900	A. P. Chute
Cornus sericea subsp. sericea	1832	Nathaniel T. Kidder	Milton, Brook Road
Galium verum L.	1846	Kupell
Carex bullata Schkuhr	1853	Collector unknown	Houghtons Pond.
Carex albicans Willd. ex Spreng.	1854	W. Boott	West Quincy: Blue Hills Reservation, River Road
Chamberlainia salebrosa (Hoffm. ex F.Weber & D.Mohr) H.Rob.	1857	T. P. James	Randolph
Grammia arge Drury, 1773	1867	not recorded	Sherborn
Carex swanii (Fernald) Mack.	1870	Joseph Blake	Sharon
Chamaecyparis thyoides (L.) Britton, Sterns & Poggenb.	1870	Joseph Blake	Sharon
Chantransia hermannii (Roth) Desvaux	1870	F. W. Dewart

All 8,172 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Mines and quarries nearby

10 of 11 shown

The federal mineral resources record lists 11 workings within 5 miles of East Walpole: 5 past producers, 4 producers, 1 unknown, 1 occurrence. 4 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Iron, Granite, Stone, Crushed/Broken. 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
Hopkinton Quarry	Granite	Producer
Walpole Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Producer
Iron Mountain Mine	Iron	Past Producer
Thorn Mountain Prospect	Iron	Occurrence
Dedham Pit & Plant	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Dedham Sand and Gravel Co	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer	Sedimentary
Farnham Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Robbins Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Sansone Brothers	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer	Sedimentary
West Sand & Gravel Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Unknown

Every working recorded in Norfolk County

Storms nearby

6 since 1998

The National Weather Service names East Walpole in 6 storm reports between 1998 and 2025: 2 thunderstorm wind, 1 flash flood, 1 hail, 1 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
May 2009	Lightning	East Walpole	$1,000,000	Lightning struck an eight unit condominium building setting fire to the attic. The fire engulfed the entire building, destroying the condos. One firefighter suffered from heat exhaustion while trying to extinguish the fire.
June 1998	Flash Flood	East Walpole	$570,000	Traphole Brook
June 2021	Thunderstorm Wind	East Walpole	$500	In Sharon at 605 PM EDT (505 PM EST) a tree was down on Norwood Street at Avalon Drive.
September 2025	Thunderstorm Wind	East Walpole	$100	In Sharon, a large tree was down across a driveway.
April 2018	Flood	East Walpole	-	At 5:55 PM EST, an amateur radio operator reported Walcott Avenue at Francis William Bird Park as flooded and impassable.
July 1999	Hail	East Walpole	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Norfolk 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
Winslows	0.6 miles	41
Plimptonville	1.4 miles	41
Walpole Heights	1.6 miles	41
Norwood	2.3 miles	41
Walpole	2.5 miles	41
Canton Junction	2.6 miles	41
Sharon	3.1 miles	40
East Sharon	3.2 miles	41

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 East Walpole	An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q122567529	The 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 612447. 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.