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

Varnumtown, Massachusetts

48 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1886 and the latest in 1988. It lies in ZIP code area 03076. It stands on Chandler Hill. The Survey maps it on the Lowell quadrangle.

Varnumtown within Middlesex County

Then and now

1886 to 1988

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 Varnumtown, surveyed 1988

Topographic sheet of Varnumtown, surveyed 1886

Topographic sheets covering this place

48 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

130 since 1993

The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 130 fires within 5 miles of Varnumtown between 1993 and 2020, burning about 107 acres in total. 4 started naturally. 27 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
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	44
Arson/incendiarism	27
Debris and open burning	23
Recreation and ceremony	18
Smoking	6
Misuse of fire by a minor	5
Natural	4
Equipment and vehicle use	2
Railroad operations and maintenance	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
6 September 2002	Smoking	under an acre	Massachussetts State Fire Marshal's Office	not named
26 September 2015	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
22 September 2002	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	Massachussetts State Fire Marshal's Office	not named
13 September 2018	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	New Hampshire Division of Forest and Lands	not named
9 August 2002	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachussetts State Fire Marshal's Office	not named
5 August 2002	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	Massachussetts State Fire Marshal's Office	not named
4 August 2002	Arson/incendiarism	1.0 acres	Massachussetts State Fire Marshal's Office	not named
20 August 2007	Natural	1.1 acres	New Hampshire Division of Forest and Lands	not named

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Middlesex County

Specimens collected nearby

12 of 393 shown

Museums hold 393 specimens collected within 10 miles of Varnumtown between 1898 and 1975: 322 Plantae, 30 Animalia, 27 Protozoa, 10 Fungi, 3 Chromista, 1 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A. C. Mathieson, A. F. Newton, A. F. Newton, M. K. Thayer 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
Exosporium pusillum P.Karst.	1898	King C. A.	Stony Brook
Aristida dichotoma Michx.	1899	E. F. Williams
Bidens cernua L.	1899	E. F. Williams
Fuirena pumila (Torr.) Spreng.	1899	E. F. Williams
Galium tinctorium (L.) Scop.	1899	not recorded
Polygonella articulata (L.) Meisn.	1899	E. F. Williams
Araiospora pulchra Thaxt.	1900	Thaxter, R.	Stony Brook
Boletus frostii J.L.Russell	1900	A. W. Flint
Polygala sanguinea L.	1900	E. F. Williams
Alabama argillacea (Hübner, 1823)	1930	not recorded	Lowell
Salix bebbiana Sarg.	1930	J. Straughan
unnamed	1950	A. R. Hodgdon; J. Straughan	1 1/4 miles south of Pelham Village

All 393 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Mines and quarries nearby

6 within 5 miles

The federal mineral resources record lists 6 workings within 5 miles of Varnumtown: 4 past producers, 2 producers. 2 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Stone, Crushed/Broken, Cobalt, Nickel. 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
Dracut Deposit	Cobalt, Nickel	Past Producer	1876, 1939
Dracut Plant	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Producer
Essex Bituminous Concrete Products	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
A J Gagnon and Sons	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer	Sedimentary
A.J. Gagnon and Sons, Inc. Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
George R Vinal	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer	Sedimentary

Every working recorded in Middlesex County

Storms nearby

2 since 2021

The National Weather Service names Varnumtown in 2 storm reports between 2021 and 2022: 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
March 2022	Thunderstorm Wind	Varnumtown	$1,000	In Dracut, a large tree was down on B Street.
June 2021	Thunderstorm Wind	Varnumtown	$500	In Dracut, a tree was down on Long Pond Drive.

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
Long Pond Park	0.6 miles	48
Camp Kiwanis	0.8 miles	50
Collinsville	1.6 miles	48
Norris Corner	2.1 miles	50
Willowdale	2.4 miles	50
Tyngsboro	3.6 miles	50
Pawtucketville	3.7 miles	48
Dracut	4.1 miles	48

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 Q122558099

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 611884. 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.