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

Wauwinet, Massachusetts

31 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1889 and the latest in 1994. It stands in Nantucket town. It lies in ZIP code area 02554. It sits by Squam Head. The Survey maps it on the Siasconset OE E quadrangle. It stands 10 feet above sea level.

Wauwinet within Nantucket County

Then and now

1889 to 1994

The same ground, surveyed 105 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.

Topographic sheet of Wauwinet, surveyed 1994

Topographic sheet of Wauwinet, surveyed 1889

Topographic sheets covering this place

31 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

17,013 words on this township

Illustrated Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, Taunton, New Bedford, Fall River; a Guide and Souvenir to the Famous Resorts and Noted Cities of Southeastern Massachusetts, with Maps, List of Hotels, Rates, Time-tables, Etc, published 1889 names this settlement in its chapter on Nantucket Town. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

Nantucket is the name of a county, a township, an island, and a town. As a county and a township it is the same, embracing the main island, Tuckernuck, Muskeget, the two Gravelly Islands, and, when cut off by the sea, Smith's Point Island. On the island is the town itself, the village of Siasconset, the summer resorts of Surfside and Wauwinet, and many separately named localities or districts, as Coatue, Squam, Quaise, Polpis, North Pasture, Middle Pasture, and South Pasture, the Plains, Maddequet, and Great Neck.

Passage source: Illustrated Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, Taunton, New Bedford, Fall River; a Guide and Souvenir to the Famous Resorts and Noted Cities of Southeastern Massachusetts, with Maps, List of Hotels, Rates, Time-tables, Etc, published 1889.

One of the chief attractions of the old town is the South Church Tower, not so much for itself as for the view to be obtained from it, Here spread out before you are charming and magnificent views of sea, harbor, and shore, the old houses of the town, the broad substantial mansions of fifty years ago, with the lighter and more fanciful ones of modern construction. |The numerous fishing and pleasure boats and yawls that gather about the wharves, buildings now unused that were connected with the industries of the whale fishery, the railroad winding across the meadows, the steamers coming from or going to the Vineyard, the daily line of pleasure boats skimming the harbor to Wauwinet - all this moving panorama, especially if the day is clear, will repay you a hundred times for your visit and the climb up the stairs. This tower was constructed in 1795, and the bell hung in 1800. If you wish to know the history of the bell you will find it in good print in a frame on the stairway, and any of the town criers, who may be found in their rooms in this tower, will gladly inform you in regard to any mooted point. The tower is usually open and is free to the public, although a small gratuity to the care-taker is usually customary. All the principal buildings can be easily discerned from this outlook. Northward is the square tower of the Congregational Church ; near it a little to the westward is the bulk of the High School; eastward are the Veranda and Springfield houses, two of the largest of the hotels. To the northeast is Brant Point, with its lighthouse, cottages, and hotel, while between it and the observer are all the wharves and the harbor, the whole very sharply defined. Stretching away in the distance is the long harbor and its natural breakwater, the peninsula of Coatue, every curve and sinuosity of its shores clearly discernible. Westward and southward is the principal part of the old town, almost due south, the old wind-mill being a conspicuous object, while beyond, in the outskirts, are seen the various graveyards, and further away, the low hills and glimpses of the ponds in the western portion of the island. A very conspicuous object to the northwest is the standpipe of the water-works.

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 Nantucket Town.

Fires near this place

4 since 2005

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 4 fires within 5 miles of Wauwinet between 2005 and 2017, burning about 2 acres in total. None 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.

Reported cause	Fires
Arson/incendiarism	3
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	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
20 August 2005	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	Massachussetts State Fire Marshal's Office	not named
22 July 2005	Arson/incendiarism	1.0 acres	Massachussetts State Fire Marshal's Office	not named
8 May 2017	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
23 April 2017	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Nantucket County

Specimens collected near this place

12 of 4,027 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. Museums hold 4,027 specimens collected within 10 miles of Wauwinet between 1825 and 1974: 2,653 Plantae, 854 Animalia, 382 Fungi, 110 Chromista, 21 Unrecorded, 7 Bacteria. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A AND P STARRETT, A. B. Seymour, A. Cohen 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
Anemone quinquefolia L.	1900	M. A. Day
Rumex maritimus var. fueginus (Phil.) Dusén	1825	Collector unspecified	Martha's Vineyard. Block Id.
Chrysopsis falcata (Pursh) Elliott	1827	F. A. Greene
Platanthera flava (L.) Lindl.	1827	T. A. Greene	Nantucket.
Desmodium rigidum (Elliott) DC.	1829	Oakes
Ceramium cimbricum H.E.Petersen	1831	not recorded	Nantucket.
Gloeosporium polygoni Dearn. & House	1836	Guba E. F.	Nantucket Co. Cultivated Fields on Hummock Rd.
Chondria dasyphylla (Woodward) C.Agardh	1848	M. L. Owen
Ludwigia palustris (L.) Elliott	1849	J. L. Russell
Acer rubrum L.	1899	Nellie F. Flynn
Aletris farinosa L.	1899	Flynn, N. F.	Nantucket
Ambrosia artemisiifolia L.	1899	Nellie F. Flynn

All 4,027 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

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
Chadwicks Folly	0.7 miles	31
Squam	0.9 miles	31
Pocomo	1.7 miles	32
Quidnet	1.9 miles	31
Coskata	2.1 miles	30
Polpis	2.3 miles	32
Hoicks Hollow	3.2 miles	31
Quaise	3.2 miles	32

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 Wauwinet	An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q7975242	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 616971. 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.