Rock Harbor, Massachusetts

The same ground, surveyed 107 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.

1887 1994

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 Wellfleet quadrangle1:62500
• 1889 USGS Wellfleet quadrangle1:62500
• 1893 USGS Wellfleet quadrangle1:62500
• 1893 USGS Wellfleet quadrangle1:62500
• 1893 USGS Wellfleet quadrangle1:62500
• 1893 USGS Wellfleet quadrangle1:62500
• 1893 USGS Wellfleet quadrangle1:62500
• 1893 USGS Wellfleet quadrangle1:62500
• 1893 USGS Wellfleet quadrangle1:62500
• 1893 USGS Wellfleet quadrangle1:62500
• 1942 USGS Cape Cod Bay quadrangle1:125000
• 1944 USGS Orleans quadrangle1:31680
• 1944 USGS Orleans quadrangle1:31680
• 1944 USGS Orleans quadrangle1:31680
• 1946 USGS Orleans quadrangle1:24000
• 1946 USGS Orleans quadrangle1:25000
• 1947 USGS Providence quadrangle1:250000
• 1947 USGS Providence quadrangle1:250000
• 1947 USGS Providence quadrangle1:250000
• 1947 USGS Providence quadrangle1:250000
• 1947 USGS Providence quadrangle1:250000
• 1948 USGS Providence quadrangle1:250000
• 1957 USGS Providence quadrangle1:250000
• 1958 USGS Providence quadrangle1:250000
• 1962 USGS Orleans quadrangle1:24000
• 1962 USGS Orleans quadrangle1:24000
• 1963 USGS Providence quadrangle1:250000
• 1974 USGS Orleans quadrangle1:24000
• 1974 USGS Orleans quadrangle1:25000
• 1974 USGS Orleans quadrangle1:25000
• 1977 USGS Orleans quadrangle1:25000
• 1986 USGS New Bedford quadrangle1:100000
• 1994 USGS New Bedford quadrangle1:100000

The county history of 1890 has no passage naming this settlement, which was common for the smaller places. Its township is covered in full.

The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 79 fires within 5 miles of Rock Harbor between 1993 and 2020, burning about 43 acres in total. 9 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:

• East Orleans
• Namskaket
• Orleans
• East Brewster
• Eastham
• First Encounter Beach

Every fire recorded in Barnstable County

Museums hold 3,229 specimens collected within 10 miles of Rock Harbor between 1819 and 1975: 1,668 Animalia, 1,175 Plantae, 188 Fungi, 75 Chromista, 68 Bacteria, 55 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A. B. Seymour, A. R. Alan Hodgdon Hodgdon, 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	Species	Year	Collected by	Where, as recorded
	Laminaria caperata Bachelot de la Pylaie, 1824	1819	Collector unknown
	Carya tomentosa (Lam.) Nutt.	1840	Collector unspecified
	Stenotomus chrysops (Linnaeus, 1766)	1860	William Bemis	Cape Cod Bay, Wellfleet Harbor
	Carex foenea Willd.	1864	W. P. Alcott	Wellfleet
	Alosa mediocris (Mitchill, 1814)	1871	MCZ team	Brewster, Cape Cod, Massachusetts
	Bittiolum alternatum (Say, 1822)	1872	Smith, S. I.; Harger, O., U.S. Fish Commission	Cape Cod
	Buccinum undatum Linnaeus, 1758	1872	Smith, S. I.; Harger, O., U.S. Fish Commission	Cape Cod
	Gastropoda	1872	Smith, S. I.; Harger, O., U.S. Fish Commission	Cape Cod
	Helix Linnaeus, 1758	1872	Smith, S. I.; Harger, O., U.S. Fish Commission	Cape Cod
	Hydrobia minuta (Totten, 1834)	1872	Smith, S. I.; Harger, O., U.S. Fish Commission	Cape Cod
	Lacuna vincta (Montagu, 1803)	1872	Smith, S. I.; Harger, O., U.S. Fish Commission	Cape Cod
	Littorina littorea (Linnaeus, 1758)	1872	Smith, S. I.; Harger, O., U.S. Fish Commission	Cape Cod

All 3,229 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

The National Weather Service names Rock Harbor in 2 storm reports between 2018 and 2018: 1 flood, 1 thunderstorm wind. 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 Barnstable County

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

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 616904. 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.

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.