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

West Brewster, Massachusetts

31 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1887 and the latest in 1994. It stands in Brewster town. It lies in ZIP code area 02631. It stands on Stony Brook. The Survey maps it on the Harwich quadrangle.

West Brewster within Barnstable County

Then and now

1887 to 1994

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.

Topographic sheet of West Brewster, surveyed 1994
Topographic sheet of West Brewster, surveyed 1887

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 1890 county history

30 words on this township

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 chapter on Brewster Town covers the township.

Read the chapter on Brewster Town - 30 words.

Fires nearby

50 since 2015

The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 50 fires within 5 miles of West Brewster between 2015 and 2020, burning about 16 acres in total. 4 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
Missing data/not specified/undetermined21
Debris and open burning14
Natural4
Recreation and ceremony4
Arson/incendiarism3
Equipment and vehicle use3
Smoking1

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
26 September 2018Missing data/not specified/undeterminedunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
20 September 2020Smokingunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
19 September 2020Recreation and ceremonyunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
3 August 2017Missing data/not specified/undeterminedunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
2 August 2015Debris and open burningunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control2597
16 August 2020Recreation and ceremonyunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
12 August 2020Missing data/not specified/undeterminedunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
7 July 2020Recreation and ceremonyunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Barnstable County

Specimens collected nearby

12 of 4,083 shown

Museums hold 4,083 specimens collected within 10 miles of West Brewster between 1819 and 1975: 2,287 Animalia, 1,361 Plantae, 240 Fungi, 107 Chromista, 60 Bacteria, 27 Unrecorded, 1 Protozoa. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A. B. Seymour, A. R. 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 SpeciesYear Collected by Where, as recorded
Laminaria caperata Bachelot de la Pylaie, 18241819Collector unknown
A photograph of the species Carya tomentosa, not of this specimenCarya tomentosa (Lam.) Nutt.1840Collector unspecified
A photograph of the species Alosa mediocris, not of this specimenAlosa mediocris (Mitchill, 1814)1871MCZ teamBrewster, Cape Cod, Massachusetts
A photograph of the species Cancer irroratus, not of this specimenCancer irroratus Say, 18171875United States Fish Commission
Decapoda1875United States Fish Commission
A photograph of the species Mytilus edulis, not of this specimenMytilus edulis Linnaeus, 17581875United States Fish CommissionBarnstable
A photograph of the species Nassarius obsoletus, not of this specimenNassarius obsoletus (Say, 1822)1875United States Fish CommissionBarnstable
A photograph of the species Petricolaria pholadiformis, not of this specimenPetricolaria pholadiformis (Lamarck, 1818)1875United States Fish CommissionBarnstable
A photograph of the species Philoscia muscorum, not of this specimenPhiloscia muscorum (Scopoli, 1763)1875United States Fish Commission
A photograph of the species Urosalpinx cinerea, not of this specimenUrosalpinx cinerea (Say, 1822)1875United States Fish CommissionBarnstable
A photograph of the species Carex tonsa, not of this specimenCarex tonsa var. tonsa1876C. N. Brainard
A photograph of the species Drosera filiformis, not of this specimenDrosera filiformis var. filiformis1876not recorded

All 4,083 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Storms nearby

4 since 2015

The National Weather Service names West Brewster in 4 storm reports between 2015 and 2019: 2 flood, 1 lightning, 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
July 2019Thunderstorm WindWest Brewster$20,000In Brewster, a large tree was down on Stony Brook Road. A tree and power lines were down on Run Hill Road. Numerous other trees were down throughout the town.
August 2018LightningWest Brewster$5,000At 10:17 AM EST, lightning struck a house on Red Top Road in Brewster, starting a house fire.
October 2017FloodWest Brewster-Stony Brook Mill area of western Brewster was flooding. A Storm Total of four and one-half inches of rain was measured by amateur radio in Brewster.
July 2015FloodWest Brewster-Main Street was flooded and closed for 20 minutes.

Every storm recorded in Barnstable 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
Brewster1.8 miles32
Pleasant Lake2.6 miles31
South Brewster2.7 miles31
East Dennis2.8 miles31
East Brewster3.1 miles32
North Harwich3.4 miles31
Harwich4.4 miles31
Dennis4.5 miles31

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 Q122555296The 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 616012. 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.