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

North Tewksbury, Massachusetts

38 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1886 and the latest in 1988. It stands in Tewksbury town. It lies in ZIP code area 01876. It stands on Ames Hill. The Survey maps it on the Lawrence quadrangle.

North Tewksbury within Middlesex County

Then and now

1886 to 1988

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 North Tewksbury, surveyed 1988

Topographic sheet of North Tewksbury, surveyed 1886

Topographic sheets covering this place

38 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.

In the county-history sources

23,686 words on this township

History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : Containing Carefully Prepared Histories of Every City and Town in the County, published 1880 names this settlement in its chapter on Tewksbury Town. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

In the old times the two sections (soutliern and northern) were distinguished by tiie sigiiiticant names of Pigeon End and Shad End ; the former on account of the numerous flocks of pigeons captured in that part, and the latter because of the immense quantities of fish (shad and salmon) taken in the spring of the year in the Merrimack, before the days of Lowell and Lawrence, and when the river was unobstructed by dams.

Passage source: History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : Containing Carefully Prepared Histories of Every City and Town in the County, published 1880.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Tewksbury Town.

Fires near this place

117 since 2001

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 117 fires within 5 miles of North Tewksbury between 2001 and 2020, burning about 57 acres in total. 4 started naturally. 18 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	29
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	28
Arson/incendiarism	18
Recreation and ceremony	14
Smoking	11
Misuse of fire by a minor	4
Equipment and vehicle use	4
Natural	4
Power generation/transmission/distribution	3
Railroad operations and maintenance	2

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
17 August 2002	Recreation and ceremony	1.0 acres	Massachussetts State Fire Marshal's Office	not named
14 August 2002	Natural	under an acre	Massachussetts State Fire Marshal's Office	not named
26 July 2002	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	Massachussetts State Fire Marshal's Office	not named
23 July 2016	Power generation/transmission/distribution	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	ANDOVER
22 July 2016	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	ANDOVR
22 July 2016	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	ANDOVR
21 July 2004	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachussetts State Fire Marshal's Office	not named
20 July 2020	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 Middlesex County

Specimens collected near this place

12 of 524 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. Museums hold 524 specimens collected within 10 miles of North Tewksbury between 1898 and 1975: 370 Plantae, 118 Animalia, 31 Fungi, 2 Chromista, 2 Protozoa, 1 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A. C. Mathieson, A. F. Newton, A. J. S. 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
Esox americanus Gmelin, 1789	1898	E. Preble	Maple Meadow Brook near Wilmington, Massachusetts
Exosporium pusillum P.Karst.	1898	King C. A.	Stony Brook
Antennaria howellii subsp. neodioica (Greene) R.J.Bayer	1899	Williams, E.F.
Antennaria neglecta Greene	1899	not recorded
Aristida dichotoma Michx.	1899	E. F. Williams
Arthrosporium compositum Ellis	1899	Rorer	East Billerica
Asarum canadense L.	1899	E. F. Williams
Bidens cernua L.	1899	E. F. Williams
Dichanthelium oligosanthes subsp. scribnerianum (Nash) Freckmann & Lelong	1899	E. F. Williams
Araiospora pulchra Thaxt.	1900	Thaxter, R.	Stony Brook
Betula alleghaniensis Britton	1900	E. F. Williams
Betula nigra L.	1900	not recorded

All 524 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Mines and quarries near this place

10 of 11 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 11 workings within 5 miles of North Tewksbury: 4 past producers, 3 plants, 3 producers, 1 unknown. 6 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Graphite, Stone, Crushed/Broken, Nickel, Gold, Silver, Copper. 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
Dracut Deposit	Cobalt, Nickel	Past Producer	1876, 1939
Dracut Ni Mine/Nickel Mine Hill	Nickel, Gold, Silver, Copper	Past Producer
Avaco Corp--Lowell, Ma.	Graphite	Plant
Brox Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Producer
George Brox Inc	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
Stackpole Fibers Co--Lowell, Ma.	Graphite	Plant
Dracut Pit and Mill	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Lowell Plant	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Plant
New England Concrete Block and Pipe	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer	Sedimentary
Rocco Zambino and Sons, Inc. Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer

Every working recorded in Middlesex County

Storms near this place

3 since 2020

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names North Tewksbury in 3 storm reports between 2020 and 2023: 1 thunderstorm wind, 1 flash flood, 1 lightning. 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 2020	Thunderstorm Wind	North Tewksbury	$25,000	In Andover, twelve trees were down on Southridge Circle, with several of them landing on homes. A tree was down on wires on Greewood Road and a tree was down on wires on Chandler Road.
July 2023	Lightning	North Tewksbury	$5,000	In Tewksbury, a lightning strike started a house fire on the 20 block of Sheridan Lane.
July 2023	Flash Flood	North Tewksbury	-	In Dracut, Troll Brook Ln was flooded with a sinkhole in the yard of a residence.

Every storm recorded in Middlesex 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
Wamesit	1.1 miles	48
Tewksbury	1.8 miles	41
Tewksbury Junction	2.1 miles	41
Kenwood	2.1 miles	48
Oaklands	2.1 miles	48
Belvidere	2.3 miles	48
South Lowell	2.4 miles	41
Bleachery	3.1 miles	48

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 Q122595149

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 612358. 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.