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

Housatonic, Massachusetts

42 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1888 and the latest in 1997. It stands in Great Barrington town. It lies in ZIP code area 01236. It stands on Flag Rock. The Survey maps it on the Stockbridge quadrangle. 1,083 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 735 feet above sea level.

Housatonic within Berkshire County

Population over time

2 figures

Housatonic fell from 1,109 to 1,083 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.

Year	People	Change
2010	1,109
2020	1,083	-26 (-2%)

Then and now

1888 to 1997

The same ground, surveyed 109 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.

Topographic sheet of Housatonic, surveyed 1997

Topographic sheet of Housatonic, surveyed 1888

Topographic sheets covering this place

42 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.

Photographs

2 photographs,

Taken for the Office of War Information and the Farm Security Administration, who photographed the country between 1935 and 1944. Works of United States government photographers, with no known restriction on use. Each opens its catalogue record.

Housatonic National Bank, Stockbridge, Berkshire County, MA
Unattributed, . Library of Congress

Butler Bridge, Spans Housatonic River on Butler Road (North Glendale Road), Stockbridge, Berkshire County, MA
Unattributed, . Library of Congress

Fires nearby

24 since 2015

The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 24 fires within 5 miles of Housatonic between 2015 and 2019, burning about 13 acres in total. 2 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	16
Equipment and vehicle use	3
Natural	2
Railroad operations and maintenance	1
Smoking	1
Other causes	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
13 September 2016	Other causes	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
28 August 2016	Railroad operations and maintenance	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
1 August 2017	Smoking	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
24 July 2016	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
18 July 2019	Natural	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
8 May 2015	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
7 May 2015	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
13 May 2015	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 Berkshire County

Specimens collected nearby

12 of 1,869 shown

Museums hold 1,869 specimens collected within 10 miles of Housatonic between 1833 and 1975: 874 Plantae, 759 Animalia, 229 Fungi, 3 Protozoa, 2 Chromista, 2 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A W Evans, A. Brown, A. E. Treat 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
Potamogeton pusillus subsp. tenuissimus (Mert. & W.D.J.Koch) K.Richt.	1900	P. B. Weatherbee
Betula alleghaniensis Britton	1833	Collector unknown
Betula pumila L.	1833	Collector unspecified
Carex utriculata Boott	1833	W. L. Worcester
Dennstaedtia punctilobula (Michx.) T.Moore	1833	Collector unknown
Gymnocarpium dryopteris (L.) Newman	1833	Collector unknown
Parnassia caroliniana Michx.	1834	not recorded
Percopsis omiscomaycus (Walbaum, 1792)	1860	Britton McCabe	Green R. (trib. of Housatonic R.), 1 mi. S of Great Barrington on Rt. 23
Platanthera peramoena A.Gray	1863	J. T. Stewart	Glendale
Spiranthes magnicamporum Sheviak	1863	J. T. Stewart	Glendale
Bartramia pomiformis Hedw.	1895	not recorded
Acer saccharum Marshall	1897	Vail, A.M.	Tyringham

All 1,869 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 Housatonic: 6 past producers, 4 producers, 1 occurrence. 4 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Iron, Limestone, General, 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
No 6 Quarry & Plnt Lane & Son	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Producer
John S Lane and Son Inc	Limestone, General	Past Producer	Sedimentary
Toby Lime Plant	Limestone, General	Producer
Tremper Mine	Iron	Occurrence	Limonite
Tremper Mine	Iron	Past Producer	Residual
Tremper Mine	Iron	Past Producer
Beacco Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Donovan Pit & Mill	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
J Donovan and Son	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer	Sedimentary
Mercer Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer

Every working recorded in Berkshire County

Storms nearby

6 since 2001

The National Weather Service names Housatonic in 6 storm reports between 2001 and 2024: 4 thunderstorm wind, 2 hail. 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
June 2001	Hail	Housatonic	$15,000	no account filed
August 2003	Thunderstorm Wind	Housatonic	$5,000	no account filed
June 2024	Thunderstorm Wind	Housatonic	-	A tree was downed onto a house.
June 2017	Thunderstorm Wind	Housatonic	-	A tree was downed blocking the road on North Plain Road near a farm in Great Barrington due to thunderstorm winds.
August 2016	Thunderstorm Wind	Housatonic	-	A tree was downed onto a house on Park Street in the village of Housatonic in the town of Great Barrington due to thunderstorm winds.
June 2006	Hail	Housatonic	-	A trained spotter reported penny-sized hail at Housatonic.

Every storm recorded in Berkshire 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
Risingdale	0.7 miles	40
Williamsville	1.1 miles	43
Van Deusenville	1.9 miles	40
Glendale	2.3 miles	42
Rockdale Mills	2.6 miles	43
Alford	2.8 miles	42
Stockbridge	3.3 miles	42
Larrywaug	3.6 miles	42

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 Housatonic	An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q5913510	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 607478. 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.