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

Fairlawn, Massachusetts

44 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1887 and the latest in 1989. It stands in Shrewsbury town. It lies in ZIP code area 01545. It stands on West Brook. The Survey maps it on the Shrewsbury quadrangle.

Fairlawn within Worcester County

Then and now

1887 to 1989

The same ground, surveyed 102 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.

Topographic sheet of Fairlawn, surveyed 1989
Topographic sheet of Fairlawn, surveyed 1887

Topographic sheets covering this place

44 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

46 since 2002

The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 46 fires within 5 miles of Fairlawn between 2002 and 2020, burning about 19 acres in total. None started naturally. 7 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 burning21
Smoking10
Arson/incendiarism7
Missing data/not specified/undetermined7
Recreation and ceremony1

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
18 September 2016Smoking3.0 acresMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
25 August 2017Debris and open burningunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
21 August 2017Debris and open burning1.0 acresMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
13 August 2020Missing data/not specified/undeterminedunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
24 July 2018Debris and open burningunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
21 July 2020Smokingunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
5 June 2020Debris and open burningunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
25 June 2017Debris and open burningunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Worcester County

Specimens collected nearby

12 of 1,755 shown

Museums hold 1,755 specimens collected within 10 miles of Fairlawn between 1839 and 1974: 990 Plantae, 486 Animalia, 257 Fungi, 14 Unrecorded, 6 Protozoa, 2 Chromista. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A E WOODHEAD, A. A. Eaton, A. B. Seymour 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
Specimen of Sceptridium dissectum (Spreng.) LyonSceptridium dissectum (Spreng.) Lyon1899H. H. Scudder
Specimen of Pooecetes gramineus gramineus (J.F.Gmelin, 1789)Pooecetes gramineus gramineus (J.F.Gmelin, 1789)1900Roscoe I. Giles
A photograph of the species Ochrolechia tartarea, not of this specimenOchrolechia tartarea (L.) A.Massal.1839E. Tuckerman
A photograph of the species Carex laxiflora, not of this specimenCarex laxiflora Lam.1840Thomas NuttallCambridge.
A photograph of the species Carex vestita, not of this specimenCarex vestita Willd.1840Thomas NuttallCambridge.
A photograph of the species Mycobilimbia hypnorum, not of this specimenMycobilimbia hypnorum (Lib.) Kalb & Hafellner1848E. Tuckerman
A photograph of the species Tamias striatus, not of this specimenTamias striatus lysteri (Richardson, 1829)1848L AgassizPARSONS ISLAND
A photograph of the species Cladonia cornucopioides, not of this specimenCladonia cornucopioides F.Wilson1850J. L. RussellLeicester
A photograph of the species Geranium maculatum, not of this specimenGeranium maculatum L.1850not recorded
A photograph of the species Packera aurea, not of this specimenPackera aurea (L.) Á.Löve & D.Löve1850not recorded
Elymus repens (L.) Gould1892Arthur B. SeymourCambridge.
Festuca pratensis Huds.1892Arthur B. SeymourCambridge.

All 1,755 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 Fairlawn: 6 past producers, 4 producers, 1 plant. 5 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Lead, Stone. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Where SiteCommodity StatusRecorded
Bd Bloomfield Co--Worcester, Ma.LeadPlant
Shrewsbury Trap RockStoneProducer
30 Southwest Cutoff PlantSand and Gravel, ConstructionProducer
Capa CorporationSand and Gravel, ConstructionPast Producer
F Ang G Sand and GravelSand and Gravel, ConstructionPast ProducerSedimentary
F and G PitSand and Gravel, ConstructionProducer
Grafton PlantSand and Gravel, ConstructionProducer
Sewall PitSand and Gravel, ConstructionPast Producer
Shrewsbury PitSand and Gravel, ConstructionPast Producer
Town of BoylstonSand and Gravel, ConstructionPast ProducerSedimentary

Every working recorded in Worcester County

Storms nearby

6 since 2008

The National Weather Service names Fairlawn in 6 storm reports between 2008 and 2017: 5 flood, 1 flash 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
June 2013Flash FloodFairlawn$30,000In Worcester, Maple Avenue was washed out with water flowing into a building. Emergency managers reported several roads were closed due to flooding. A garage on Chestnut Avenue was flooded with 8 inches of water. Central Street was flooded over the curbs and into city hall. In Leicester, the Grindstone River was out of its banks and flowing over Peter Salem Road.
July 2016FloodFairlawn$5,000Route 9 between Crescent Street and Maple Avenue was impassable due to flooding. Five cars were stuck in the flood waters over this stretch.
June 2017FloodFairlawn$1,000At 139 PM EST, the right lane of Maple Avenue in Shrewsbury was flooded and impassible.
July 2008FloodFairlawn$1,000Several streets in downtown Worcester were impassable because of flooding, including the Route 20 underpass at Route 122. In Shrewsbury, there was one foot of standing water in the intersection of Route 9 and Maple Avenue.
August 2016FloodFairlawn-West Main Street was flooded near the bridges.
July 2013FloodFairlawn-The westbound lane of Route 9 was closed due to flooding.

Every storm recorded in Worcester 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
Lakeview1.1 miles45
South Shrewsbury1.3 miles44
Pinecrest1.6 miles45
Bloomingdale1.7 miles45
Edgemere1.8 miles45
Hamilton1.9 miles45
Shrewsbury2.1 miles44
Shrewsbury Street2.5 miles45

Provenance

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 610853. 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.