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

Monument Beach, Massachusetts

40 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1886 and the latest in 1994. It stands in Bourne town. It lies in ZIP code area 02532. It stands on Back River. The Survey maps it on the Pocasset quadrangle. 2,784 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 217 feet above sea level.

Monument Beach within Barnstable County

Population over time

2 figures

Monument Beach fell from 2,790 to 2,784 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.

YearPeople Change
20102,790
20202,784-6 (-0%)

Then and now

1886 to 1994

The same ground, surveyed 108 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.

Topographic sheet of Monument Beach, surveyed 1994
Topographic sheet of Monument Beach, surveyed 1886

Topographic sheets covering this place

40 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

166 since 2001

The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 166 fires within 5 miles of Monument Beach between 2001 and 2020, burning about 222 acres in total. 6 started naturally. 19 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
Missing data/not specified/undetermined63
Debris and open burning32
Smoking25
Arson/incendiarism19
Equipment and vehicle use8
Misuse of fire by a minor7
Natural6
Recreation and ceremony6

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
9 September 2015Missing data/not specified/undeterminedunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire ControlWAREHAM
7 September 2020Misuse of fire by a minorunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
7 September 2002Smokingunder an acreMassachussetts State Fire Marshal's Officenot named
6 September 2015Missing data/not specified/undeterminedunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire ControlWAREHAM
5 September 2015Missing data/not specified/undeterminedunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire ControlWAREHAM
4 September 2015Recreation and ceremonyunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire ControlWAREHAM
4 September 2004Missing data/not specified/undeterminedunder an acreMassachussetts State Fire Marshal's Officenot named
3 September 2018Debris and open burningunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Barnstable County

Specimens collected nearby

12 of 2,749 shown

Museums hold 2,749 specimens collected within 10 miles of Monument Beach between 1791 and 1975: 1,583 Animalia, 710 Plantae, 351 Fungi, 82 Chromista, 13 Bacteria, 7 Protozoa, 3 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A. B. Seymour, A. H. Moore, A. R. Hodgdon 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 Tolyposporium eriocauli G.P.ClintonTolyposporium eriocauli G.P.Clinton1900G.P. Clinton
Specimen of Ustilago nuda (C.N.Jensen) Kellerm. & SwingleUstilago nuda (C.N.Jensen) Kellerm. & Swingle1900G. P. Clinton
A photograph of the species Drosera filiformis, not of this specimenDrosera filiformis var. filiformis1791not recorded
A photograph of the species Cistus L., not of this specimenCistus L.1816Boott, F.M.Sandwich, Massts. [=Sandwich, Massachusetts].
Lythraceae1816Boott, J.W.Sandwich, Mass'ts. | [On reverse of sheet:] From Sandwich, Mass'ts U.S.A. [=From Sandwich, Massachusetts, U.S.A.]
A photograph of the species Malva neglecta, not of this specimenMalva neglecta Wallr.1816Boott, J.W.Sandwich. Mass.tts.
A photograph of the species Chilomycterus geometricus, not of this specimenChilomycterus geometricus (Bloch & Schneider, 1801)1860unknownBuzzards Bay
A photograph of the species Nereis megalops, not of this specimenNereis megalops (Verrill, 1873)1871Verrill, A. E.Falmouth. Waquoit Pond
A photograph of the species Nereis pelagica, not of this specimenNereis pelagica Linnaeus, 17581871Verrill, A. E.Falmouth. Waquoit Pond
A photograph of the species Nereis succinea, not of this specimenNereis succinea Leuckart, 18471871Verrill, A. E.Falmouth. Waquoit Pond
A photograph of the species Notomastus luridus, not of this specimenNotomastus luridus Verrill, 18731871Verrill, A. E.Falmouth. Waquoit Pond
A photograph of the species Gobiosoma bosc, not of this specimenGobiosoma bosc (Lacepède, 1800)1872V. Edwards & United States Bureau of FisheriesWareham River, Massachusetts.

All 2,749 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

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
Gray Gables1.1 miles40
Tahanto Beach1.4 miles40
Bourne1.6 miles40
North Pocasset1.7 miles40
Pocasset Station1.8 miles40
Buzzards Bay1.8 miles40
Barlows Landing2.1 miles39
Bourne Corners2.2 miles39

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 Monument BeachAn encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q9034929The 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 616434. 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.