Lancaster, Massachusetts

Lancaster grew from 8,055 to 8,441 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.

The same ground, surveyed 110 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.

1887 1997

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.

• 1887 USGS Marlboro quadrangle1:62500
• 1889 USGS Marlboro quadrangle1:62500
• 1896 USGS Marlboro quadrangle1:62500
• 1898 USGS Marlboro quadrangle1:62500
• 1898 USGS Marlboro quadrangle1:62500
• 1898 USGS Marlboro quadrangle1:62500
• 1898 USGS Marlboro quadrangle1:62500
• 1898 USGS Marlboro quadrangle1:62500
• 1898 USGS Marlboro quadrangle1:62500
• 1898 USGS Marlboro quadrangle1:62500
• 1898 USGS Marlboro quadrangle1:62500
• 1908 USGS Quinsigamond quadrangle1:125000
• 1908 USGS Quinsigamond quadrangle1:125000
• 1908 USGS Quinsigamond quadrangle1:125000
• 1943 USGS Clinton quadrangle1:31680
• 1943 USGS Clinton quadrangle1:31680
• 1943 USGS Clinton quadrangle1:31680
• 1943 USGS Quinsigamond quadrangle1:125000
• 1948 USGS Boston quadrangle1:250000
• 1948 USGS Boston quadrangle1:250000
• 1950 USGS Clinton quadrangle1:24000
• 1950 USGS Clinton quadrangle1:31680
• 1950 USGS Clinton quadrangle1:31680
• 1950 USGS Clinton quadrangle1:24000
• 1956 USGS Boston quadrangle1:250000
• 1956 USGS Boston quadrangle1:250000
• 1956 USGS Boston quadrangle1:250000
• 1956 USGS Boston quadrangle1:250000
• 1956 USGS Boston quadrangle1:250000
• 1956 USGS Boston quadrangle1:250000
• 1958 USGS Boston quadrangle1:250000
• 1958 USGS Boston quadrangle1:250000
• 1961 USGS Boston quadrangle1:250000
• 1961 USGS Boston quadrangle1:250000
• 1965 USGS Clinton quadrangle1:25000
• 1965 USGS Clinton quadrangle1:24000
• 1975 USGS Clinton quadrangle1:25000
• 1985 USGS Boston quadrangle1:100000
• 1988 USGS Hudson quadrangle1:25000
• 1988 USGS Hudson quadrangle1:25000
• 1989 USGS Boston quadrangle1:100000
• 1989 USGS Boston quadrangle1:100000
• 1997 USGS Hudson quadrangle1:25000

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.

The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 112 fires within 5 miles of Lancaster between 2002 and 2020, burning about 2,730 acres in total. None started naturally. 3 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.

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

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

• Camp Green Eyrie
• Five Corners
• Gates Crossing
• Harvard
• Harvard Station
• North Village

Every fire recorded in Worcester County

Museums hold 2,158 specimens collected within 10 miles of Lancaster between 1859 and 1974: 1,278 Animalia, 532 Plantae, 329 Fungi, 10 Unrecorded, 8 Chromista, 1 Protozoa. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A. B. Seymour, A. C. Gibson, A. Ferrett 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	Species	Year	Collected by	Where, as recorded
	Chrysosplenium americanum Schwein. ex Hook.	1899	E. F. Williams
	Condylura cristata cristata (Linnaeus, 1758)	1859	E S Wheeler	BERLIN
	Dryobates pubescens medianus (Swainson, 1832)	1861	not recorded	Bolton
	Clemmys insculpta Fitzinger, 1835	1864	Agassiz
	Bromus sterilis L.	1879	C. E. Faxon
	Merulius lacrymans (Wulfen) Schumach.	1879	Howes, A.	Massachusetts
	Hypericum gentianoides (L.) Britton, Sterns & Poggenb.	1881	Fredrick L Sargent	Lunenburg
	Icterus galbula (Linnaeus, 1758)	1881	G. L. Brigham	Bolton
	Nitella megacarpa (T.F.A.) R.D.W.	1881	T. F. Allen	Nashua River
	Arthuriomyces peckianus (Howe) Cummins & Y.Hirats.	1892	W. B. Hosmer
	Castilleja coccinea (L.) Spreng.	1892	E. C. Smith	Marboro.
	Tyrannus tyrannus (Linnaeus, 1758)	1892	G.L. Brigham	Bolton

All 2,158 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

The federal mineral resources record lists 9 workings within 5 miles of Lancaster: 5 past producers, 3 producers, 1 prospect. 3 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Iron, Zinc. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Every working recorded in Worcester County

The National Weather Service names Lancaster in 8 storm reports between 2005 and 2026: 6 thunderstorm wind, 1 hail, 1 funnel cloud. 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.

Every storm recorded in Worcester County

1 paper published in this town, digitised by the Library of Congress and free to read: 0 issues, 0 pages. Every page is searchable, so a name or a street can be looked for directly in what the town printed about itself at the time.

Front pages of the local paper, read from the Library of Congress scans: 5 issues spread across its run from 1828 to 1830, 22,585 words in total. Each is reproduced on its own page, exactly as the recogniser returned it.

These pages read less well than anything else here, and the number is worth stating: about three words in four come through cleanly, against nine in ten for the building records. An 1896 broadsheet sets eight-point type in seven columns on microfilm, which is the hardest thing in this archive to read by machine. We tested our own recognisers against the Library's and they were not better, so the Library's text is what appears, with the wholly unreadable columns removed. Read it as a guide to what the paper covered, and follow the link to the scan before quoting anything.

The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.

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.

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 610873. 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.