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

Elm Square, Massachusetts

39 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1886 and the latest in 1989. It stands in West Bridgewater town. It lies in ZIP code area 02379. It stands on West Meadow Brook. The Survey maps it on the Brockton quadrangle.

Elm Square within Plymouth 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 Elm Square, surveyed 1989

Topographic sheet of Elm Square, surveyed 1886

Topographic sheets covering this place

39 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

280 since 2004

The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 280 fires within 5 miles of Elm Square between 2004 and 2020, burning about 121 acres in total. 3 started naturally. 6 were 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	143
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	94
Misuse of fire by a minor	22
Smoking	7
Arson/incendiarism	6
Recreation and ceremony	5
Natural	3

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 2015	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	BROCKTON
8 September 2015	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	BROCKTON
8 September 2015	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	ABINGTON
6 September 2017	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
5 September 2017	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
5 September 2015	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	BROCKTON
4 September 2017	Misuse of fire by a minor	1.0 acres	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
4 September 2016	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	BROCKTON

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Plymouth County

Specimens collected nearby

12 of 437 shown

Museums hold 437 specimens collected within 10 miles of Elm Square between 1878 and 1975: 198 Fungi, 130 Plantae, 107 Animalia, 1 Protozoa, 1 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A. A. Eaton, A. B. Seymour, A. Grimell 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
Dichelyma capillaceum (Dicks.) Myrin	1878	Piper	East Bridgewater
Setophaga discolor discolor (Vieillot, 1809)	1880	C. T. Snow
Thelia hirtella (Hedw.) Sull.	1880	Mrs. Piper
Fontinalis novae-angliae Sull.	1883	C. G. Pringle; Mrs. Piper
Phyllactinia guttata (Wallr.) Lév.	1883	A. B. Seymour
Dendroica petechia aestiva (J.F.Gmelin, 1789)	1899	Arthur C. Dyke	Bridgewater
Glyceria fluitans (L.) R.Br.	1899	E. F. Williams
Lysimachia quadrifolia L.	1899	E. F. Williams
Resupinatus applicatus (Batsch) Gray	1899	M. V. Thayer	Holbrook.
Salix sericea Marshall	1899	E. F. Williams
Tricholoma virgatum (Fr.) P.Kumm.	1899	M. V. Thayer
Amanita crenulata Peck	1900	A. Grimell

All 437 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Mines and quarries nearby

7 within 5 miles

The federal mineral resources record lists 7 workings within 5 miles of Elm Square: 6 past producers, 1 producer. 1 still produces. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. 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
Bridgewater Sand and Gravel Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Bridgewater Town Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer	Sedimentary
Bridgewater Town Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Brockton Plant	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Brockton Sand & Gravel Company Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Gerald Kelleher Pit and Plant	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer	Sedimentary
Gourdin Plant	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer

Every working recorded in Plymouth County

Storms nearby

1 since 2011

The National Weather Service names Elm Square in 1 storm report between 2011 and 2011: 1 thunderstorm wind. 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 2011	Thunderstorm Wind	Elm Square	$3,000	A tree on Crescent Street was downed by thunderstorm winds.

Every storm recorded in Plymouth 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
Bennetts Corner	0.4 miles	39
West Bridgewater	0.7 miles	39
Cochesett	1.0 miles	39
Matfield Corner	1.1 miles	39
West Meadow	1.2 miles	39
Brooks Place	1.4 miles	39
Matfield	1.7 miles	37
Westdale	2.0 miles	37

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.

Wikidata item Q122554381

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 613083. 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.