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

Tafts Corner, Massachusetts

42 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1885 and the latest in 1989. It stands in Spencer town. It lies in ZIP code area 01562. It stands on Moose Hill. The Survey maps it on the Paxton quadrangle.

Tafts Corner within Worcester County

Then and now

1885 to 1989

The same ground, surveyed 104 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.

Topographic sheet of Tafts Corner, surveyed 1989
Topographic sheet of Tafts Corner, surveyed 1885

Topographic sheets covering this place

42 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

88 since 2015

The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 88 fires within 5 miles of Tafts Corner between 2015 and 2020, burning about 78 acres in total. None started naturally. 11 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 burning31
Recreation and ceremony21
Arson/incendiarism11
Smoking10
Equipment and vehicle use6
Missing data/not specified/undetermined4
Railroad operations and maintenance3
Other causes1
Power generation/transmission/distribution1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

DateCause SizeReported by Name on the report
3 September 2018Debris and open burningunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
3 September 2018Debris and open burningunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
2 September 2015Recreation and ceremonyunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
14 September 2016Debris and open burningunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
1 September 2020Smokingunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
1 September 2017Debris and open burningunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
31 August 2015Equipment and vehicle useunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
31 August 2015Equipment and vehicle useunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Worcester County

Specimens collected nearby

12 of 1,561 shown

Museums hold 1,561 specimens collected within 10 miles of Tafts Corner between 1839 and 1975: 961 Plantae, 311 Animalia, 267 Fungi, 16 Unrecorded, 4 Protozoa, 2 Chromista. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A E WOODHEAD, 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.

Image SpeciesYear Collected by Where, as recorded
Specimen of Carex tenera var. teneraCarex tenera var. tenera1899R. M. Harper
Specimen of Pooecetes gramineus gramineus (J.F.Gmelin, 1789)Pooecetes gramineus gramineus (J.F.Gmelin, 1789)1900Roscoe I. Giles
A photograph of the species Ochrolechia tartarea, not of this specimenOchrolechia tartarea (L.) A.Massal.1839E. Tuckerman
A photograph of the species Carex laxiflora, not of this specimenCarex laxiflora Lam.1840Thomas NuttallCambridge.
A photograph of the species Carex vestita, not of this specimenCarex vestita Willd.1840Thomas NuttallCambridge.
A photograph of the species Mycobilimbia hypnorum, not of this specimenMycobilimbia hypnorum (Lib.) Kalb & Hafellner1848E. Tuckerman
A photograph of the species Tamias striatus, not of this specimenTamias striatus lysteri (Richardson, 1829)1848L AgassizPARSONS ISLAND
A photograph of the species Cladonia cornucopioides, not of this specimenCladonia cornucopioides F.Wilson1850J. L. RussellLeicester
A photograph of the species Geranium maculatum, not of this specimenGeranium maculatum L.1850not recorded
A photograph of the species Packera aurea, not of this specimenPackera aurea (L.) Á.Löve & D.Löve1850not recorded
Elymus repens (L.) Gould1892Arthur B. SeymourCambridge.
Festuca pratensis Huds.1892Arthur B. SeymourCambridge.

All 1,561 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Mines and quarries nearby

5 within 5 miles

The federal mineral resources record lists 5 workings within 5 miles of Tafts Corner: 5 past producers. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Where SiteCommodity StatusRecorded
Highway PitSand and Gravel, ConstructionPast Producer
Kittredge PitSand and Gravel, ConstructionPast Producer
Lyford Road PitSand and Gravel, ConstructionPast Producer
Town of SpencerSand and Gravel, ConstructionPast ProducerSedimentary
Vandale PitSand and Gravel, ConstructionPast Producer

Every working recorded in Worcester County

Storms nearby

1 since 2022

The National Weather Service names Tafts Corner in 1 storm report between 2022 and 2022: 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.

WhenEvent Place namedHarm What the report says
August 2022Thunderstorm WindTafts Corner$1,800In Leicester, trees were down on Rawson Street at Burncoat Street. Also, a tree was down on a wire on Chapel Street.

Every storm recorded in Worcester 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.

Map PlaceDistance Sheets
Proctors corner0.3 miles42
Sibleys Corner1.0 miles42
Lambs Grove1.4 miles42
Upper Wire Village1.4 miles42
Lower Wire Village1.9 miles42
Spencer1.9 miles42
Hillsville2.7 miles32
Leicester2.8 miles42

Provenance

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 610284. 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.