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

South Sudbury, Massachusetts

40 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1886 and the latest in 1989. It stands in Sudbury town. It lies in ZIP code area 01776. It stands on Green Hill. The Survey maps it on the Framingham quadrangle.

South Sudbury within Middlesex County

Then and now

1886 to 1989

The same ground, surveyed 103 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.

Topographic sheet of South Sudbury, surveyed 1989

Topographic sheet of South Sudbury, 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.

In the county-history sources

18,007 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 Sudbury Town. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

The New Bedford and Lowell Railroad, lately leased for ninety-nine years to tlie Old Colony corporation, jiasses through South Sudbury, Sudbury Centre, and North Sudbury, having a depot at each of these places.

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 Sudbury Town - it names this place 1 more 1 time.

Fires near this place

108 since 1995

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 108 fires within 5 miles of South Sudbury between 1995 and 2020, burning about 143 acres in total. 1 started naturally. 12 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	47
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	30
Arson/incendiarism	12
Power generation/transmission/distribution	7
Smoking	4
Recreation and ceremony	3
Equipment and vehicle use	2
Misuse of fire by a minor	1
Natural	1
Fireworks	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
5 September 2020	Power generation/transmission/distribution	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
4 September 2018	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
3 September 2018	Smoking	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
3 September 2018	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
23 September 2020	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
23 September 2019	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
22 September 2020	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
21 September 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 1,194 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. Museums hold 1,194 specimens collected within 10 miles of South Sudbury between 1898 and 1975: 783 Animalia, 267 Plantae, 137 Fungi, 4 Chromista, 2 Protozoa, 1 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A. B. Seymour, A. B. Seymour & M. D. Feigley, A. F. Newton 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
Corvus brachyrhynchos brachyrhynchos C.L.Brehm, 1822	1900	not recorded	Wayland
Actaea pachypoda Elliott	1898	Ernest Charles Smith
Antennaria howellii subsp. canadensis (Greene) R.J.Bayer	1898	Williams, E.F.
Antennaria parlinii subsp. fallax (Greene) R.J.Bayer & Stebbins	1898	not recorded
Antennaria plantaginifolia (L.) Hook.	1898	not recorded
Aquilegia canadensis L.	1898	M. I. Gunn	Natick
Agaricus brunnescens Peck	1900	Morris, G. E.	Waltham
Agonopterix atrodorsella Clemens, 1863	1900	E. J. Smith	Sherborn
Apantesis Walker, 1855	1900	E. J. Smith	Sherborn
Apatelodes torrefacta J.E.Smith, 1797	1900	E. J. Smith	Sherborn
Araiospora pulchra Thaxt.	1900	Thaxter, Roland	Stony Brook, Mass. [Massachusetts]
Archips cerasivorana (Fitch, 1856)	1900	E. J. Smith	Sherborn

All 1,194 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Mines and quarries near this place

8 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 8 workings within 5 miles of South Sudbury: 7 past producers, 1 unknown. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Peat. 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
Panlini Loam Co	Peat	Past Producer	Peat
Arthur Scofield Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Framington Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
New England Sand & Grv Co. Pit & Pl	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Pepperell Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Sand & Gravel Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Unknown
Stonebridge Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Town of Wayland	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer	Sedimentary

Every working recorded in Middlesex County

Storms near this place

2 since 2019

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names South Sudbury in 2 storm reports between 2019 and 2024: 2 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.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
July 2019	Thunderstorm Wind	South Sudbury	$1,000	In Sudbury, a large pine tree was down on Pheasant Avenue.
August 2024	Thunderstorm Wind	South Sudbury	$200	In Sudbury, wires were down on Union Ave.

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
East Sudbury Station	0.6 miles	40
Musketamquid Village	1.4 miles	43
Sudbury	1.4 miles	43
Pine Rest	2.2 miles	43
Saxonville	2.6 miles	40
Nobscot	2.6 miles	40
Wayland	2.8 miles	46
Pine Lake	3.1 miles	43

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 Q122540350

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 611581. 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.