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

Raynham Center, Massachusetts

33 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1885 and the latest in 1987. It stands in Raynham town. It lies in ZIP code area 02767. It stands on Pine Swamp Brook. The Survey maps it on the Taunton quadrangle. 4,365 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 39 feet above sea level.

Raynham Center within Bristol County

Population over time

2 figures

Raynham Center grew from 4,100 to 4,365 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	4,100
2020	4,365	+265 (+6%)

Then and now

1885 to 1987

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 Raynham Center, surveyed 1987

Topographic sheet of Raynham Center, surveyed 1885

Topographic sheets covering this place

33 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

33,331 words on this township

History of Bristol County, Massachusetts, with Biographical Sketches of Many of Its Pioneers and Prominent Men, published 1883 names this settlement in its chapter on Raynham Town. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

" Voted to assess the town $80 in hard money to pay for beef called for by the General Court. Also, one hundred and eighty-five hard dollars to pay three soldiers, enlisted for five months, to serve in Rhode Island, and fifteen dollars a month for the three men enlisted to serve in New York."

Passage source: History of Bristol County, Massachusetts, with Biographical Sketches of Many of Its Pioneers and Prominent Men, published 1883.

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 Raynham Town.

Fires near this place

76 since 2003

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 76 fires within 5 miles of Raynham Center between 2003 and 2020, burning about 44 acres in total. 1 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
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	33
Debris and open burning	21
Recreation and ceremony	8
Smoking	6
Misuse of fire by a minor	4
Fireworks	2
Power generation/transmission/distribution	1
Natural	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
8 August 2015	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	MIDDLEBOROUGH
3 August 2020	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
28 August 2007	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Massachussetts State Fire Marshal's Office	not named
15 August 2020	Misuse of fire by a minor	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
13 August 2006	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachussetts State Fire Marshal's Office	not named
13 August 2006	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachussetts State Fire Marshal's Office	not named
11 August 2020	Misuse of fire by a minor	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
10 August 2015	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Bristol County

Specimens collected near this place

12 of 1,794 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. Museums hold 1,794 specimens collected within 10 miles of Raynham Center between 1855 and 1975: 1,014 Animalia, 597 Plantae, 173 Fungi, 6 Chromista, 3 Unrecorded, 1 Protozoa. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by ?, A. A. Eaton, A. B. Seymour 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
Condylura cristata (Linnaeus, 1758)	1855	Preparator(s): Edwin V. Komarek	Middleboro
Microtus pennsylvanicus pennsylvanicus (Ord, 1815)	1855	John W. Jenks	Middleboro
Peromyscus leucopus (Rafinesque, 1818)	1855	John W. Jenks	Middleboro
Astur Lacepède, 1799	1860	C. D. Lincoln	Taunton
Carex panicea L.	1863	J. H. Dean
Carex L.	1864	J. H. Dean	Taunton.
Carex vulpinoidea Michx.	1864	J. H. Dean
Baptisia tinctoria (L.) R.Br.	1866	Joseph Blake	Middleboro
Carex bullata Willd.	1866	Rev. J. Blake	Middleborough
Ranunculus aquatilis var. diffusus With.	1866	not recorded
Rhododendron viscosum (L.) Torr.	1866	Joseph Blake	Middleboro
Chelidonium majus L.	1875	not recorded

All 1,794 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Mines and quarries near this place

10 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 10 workings within 5 miles of Raynham Center: 5 past producers, 4 producers, 1 unknown. 4 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, 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
Taunton Plant	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Producer
Bridgewater Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
King Trucking Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Landfill Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Mc Cabe Sand and Gravel Co	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer	Sedimentary
Mccabe Sand & Gravel Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Unknown
Mccabe Sand and Gravel Company Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Raynham Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Raynham Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Sand and Gravel Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer

Every working recorded in Bristol County

Storms near this place

5 since 2016

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Raynham Center in 5 storm reports between 2016 and 2025: 3 thunderstorm wind, 1 flash flood, 1 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
July 2016	Thunderstorm Wind	Raynham Center	$10,000	Trees on Lyndon Road were downed by thunderstorm winds.
July 2025	Thunderstorm Wind	Raynham Center	$500	In Raynham, a large tree was down on King St. In Raynham, a large tree was down on King St.
July 2025	Thunderstorm Wind	Raynham Center	$300	In Raynham, wires were down on Goldfinch Dr.
August 2024	Hail	Raynham Center	-	In Raynham, 1.25 inch hail was reported.
September 2018	Flash Flood	Raynham Center	-	At 1:38 PM EST, Orchard Street in Raynham was flooded and impassable.

Every storm recorded in Bristol 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
Tracy Corner	1.1 miles	33
Prattville	1.8 miles	33
Raynham	2.0 miles	33
Whittenton	2.2 miles	33
Taunton	2.6 miles	33
Judson	2.6 miles	33
Britanniaville	2.8 miles	33
East Taunton	3.0 miles	33

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 Raynham Center	An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q7299338	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 613137. 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.