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

Plainville, Massachusetts

39 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1887 and the latest in 1989. It stands in Plainville town. It lies in ZIP code area 02762. It stands on Old Mill Brook. The Survey maps it on the Wrentham quadrangle.

Plainville within Norfolk 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 Plainville, surveyed 1989

Topographic sheet of Plainville, surveyed 1887

Topographic sheets covering this place

39 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

68 since 2012

The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 68 fires within 5 miles of Plainville between 2012 and 2020, burning about 35 acres in total. None started naturally. 1 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
Recreation and ceremony	30
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	20
Debris and open burning	10
Smoking	5
Equipment and vehicle use	2
Arson/incendiarism	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
3 September 2016	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	FOXBORO
27 September 2015	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	PLAINVILLE
27 September 2015	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	PLAINVILLE
26 September 2015	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	PLAINVILLE
25 September 2015	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	PLAINVILLE
23 September 2015	Recreation and ceremony	2.0 acres	Rhode Island Division of Forest Environment	not named
23 September 2015	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	PLAINVILLE
22 September 2015	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	PLAINVILLE

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Norfolk County

Specimens collected nearby

12 of 331 shown

Museums hold 331 specimens collected within 10 miles of Plainville between 1843 and 1973: 199 Animalia, 86 Plantae, 45 Fungi, 1 Bacteria. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A Herz, A. B. Seymour, A. M. Rogers; D. P. Rogers 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
Polygala paucifolia Willd.	1843	Shore	Woonsocket
Carex vestita Willd.	1875	Collector unspecified	Norfolk.
Acorus americanus (Raf.) Raf.	1884	Nathaniel T. Kidder	Charles River, above Medfield
Gymnosporangium clavariiforme (Wulfen) DC.	1885	A. B. Seymour
Isotria verticillata (Muhl. ex Willd.) Raf.	1885	Puffer	Bellingham
Gymnosporangium nidus-avis Thaxt.	1891	A.B. Seymour
Benthamidia florida (L.) Spach	1893	not recorded
Diaporthe Nitschke, 1870	1893	E. A. Burt
Pezicula carpinea (Pers.) Tul. ex Fuckel	1893	B.M. Duggar
Phyllachora ulmi (C.-J.Duval) Fuckel	1893	B.M. Duggar
Urocystis agropyri (Preuss) A.A.Fisch.Waldh.	1893	Thaxter, Roland	Stony Brook, Mass. [Massachusetts]
Mytilinidion tortile (Schwein.) Sacc.	1894	R.E. Schuh

All 331 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Mines and quarries nearby

10 of 23 shown

The federal mineral resources record lists 23 workings within 5 miles of Plainville: 13 past producers, 8 producers, 1 prospect, 1 unknown. 8 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Clay, Stone, Crushed/Broken, Gold. 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
Foster Prospect	Arsenic, Uranium, Thorium, REE	Prospect
Glines & Rhodes Refin.--Plainville	Gold, PGE, Silver	Past Producer
Masslite Pit	Clay, Stone	Producer
Plainville	Bloating Material	Producer	Sedimentary
Sheldonville Mine	Copper, Silver, Gold	Past Producer	Vein
Simeone Stone Corporation	Granite	Past Producer	Granite
Five Star Mineral and Mining Co	Gold	Past Producer
Sheldonville Mine	Silver, Gold	Past Producer
Masslite	Clay	Past Producer	Sedimentary
Plainville Clay Pit	Clay	Past Producer

Every working recorded in Norfolk County

Storms nearby

7 since 1998

The National Weather Service names Plainville in 7 storm reports between 1998 and 2023: 4 thunderstorm wind, 2 lightning, 1 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.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
February 2016	Thunderstorm Wind	Plainville	$15,000	Several trees and wires were downed by thunderstorm winds, blocking roads.
May 2002	Lightning	Plainville	$15,000	no account filed
July 1998	Lightning	Plainville	$15,000	no account filed
February 2016	Thunderstorm Wind	Plainville	$10,000	Two trees in Plainville were downed by thunderstorm winds, including one on Maple Street.
June 2006	Thunderstorm Wind	Plainville	$5,000	no account filed
September 2023	Thunderstorm Wind	Plainville	$3,000	In Plainville, trees were down at the 100 Block of High St.
July 2023	Flood	Plainville	-	In Plainville, Grant St was flooded and impassable.

Every storm recorded in Norfolk 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
Wilkins Four Corners	1.5 miles	39
Shepardville	1.8 miles	39
Wampum Rock	2.5 miles	39
Wampum Corner	3.2 miles	39
Sheldonville	3.6 miles	44
South Foxboro	4.0 miles	39
Wrentham	4.3 miles	39
West Wrentham	4.4 miles	44

Provenance

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 612104. 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.