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

West Pelham, Massachusetts

35 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1887 and the latest in 1990. It stands in Pelham town. It lies in ZIP code area 01002. It stands on Buffam Brook. The Survey maps it on the Shutesbury quadrangle.

West Pelham within Hampshire County

Then and now

1887 to 1990

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 West Pelham, surveyed 1990

Topographic sheet of West Pelham, surveyed 1887

Compare 1887 against another survey:

Topographic sheets covering this place

35 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.

What happened here

An account from the chapter on Pelham town, The inset identifies its exact source book and publication year.

From Geology of Old Hampshire County, Massachusetts : Comprising Franklin, Hampshire, and Hampden Counties, published 1898 - Pelham Town

The Hadley Lake Drainage

The last of the considerable deposits (m t) at hig-h level on the eastern side of the valley dependent upon the obstructed drainage which attended the retreat of the ice occupies the long, narrow valley along the west border of the Belchertown quadrangle, which runs north by the village of Leverett, along Pond Brook, and past the entrance to "Rattlesnake Gutter," and extends south across the town line into Shutesbury, skirting Mount Boreas on the east and ending just south of this mountain, where, south of 42° 25', the north branch of Fort River, which occupies the lake's former outlet, passes into a canyon to reach the open valley above East Street village, in Amherst.

Read the rest of this passage

In the county-history sources

12,634 words on this township

Geology of Old Hampshire County, Massachusetts : Comprising Franklin, Hampshire, and Hampden Counties, published 1898 names this settlement in its chapter on Pelham Town. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

The continued melting of the ice at last restricted it to the Connecticut Valley, and melting back from the steep rim of the valley on the east it formed a great waterway all along the eastern side of the Amherst basin, which continued south through the Belchertown notch along the eastern edge of the Springfield basin. In it was deposited a great body of sand and gravel (m t), occupying the position of a lateral moraine of the Connecticut Valley glacier, but ha^dng rather the origin and structure of an esker.-^ It was a great temporary river bed, its eastern bank being the mountain side, its western in part the low front ranges of the gneiss, ridges of till, and the eastern end of the Holyoke range, but for the most part the eastern rim of the great ice mass which still filled the valley and formed for much of the way the bottom as well as the western bank of the stream. The heavy sands deposited by this stream, where they rested upon a rock bottom, are still flat-topped and rest against the rock on the east, with all the peculiarities of a river-bottom deposit, at a height of 50 to 60 feet above the highest terrace of the Connecticut Lake which followed. This is true on the West Pelham plain, and southward along the eastern part of the deposit, while its western portion seems to have rested on the ice, and as the ice melted this was dropped to lower and lower levels, its bedding being much shifted and confused by the process until it came to rest in a great series of kettle-holed sands stretching down to and below the level of the highest normal terrace of the Connecticut. This latter also has abundant kettle-holes, from which I conclude that the deeply buried remnants of the ice had not wholly disappeared when the great lake assumed its place and entered upon its work of carving out its terrace flat in these kame

Passage source: Geology of Old Hampshire County, Massachusetts : Comprising Franklin, Hampshire, and Hampden Counties, published 1898.

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 Pelham Town.

Fires near this place

49 since 2003

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 49 fires within 5 miles of West Pelham between 2003 and 2020, burning about 38 acres in total. 2 started naturally. None was 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	25
Equipment and vehicle use	8
Debris and open burning	7
Recreation and ceremony	6
Natural	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
29 September 2017	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
28 September 2017	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
23 July 2016	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
23 July 2016	Natural	5.3 acres	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
22 July 2017	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
14 July 2016	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
27 June 2016	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
26 June 2020	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	2.0 acres	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Hampshire County

Specimens collected near this place

12 of 9,602 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. Museums hold 9,602 specimens collected within 10 miles of West Pelham between 1781 and 1975: 4,228 Animalia, 3,023 Plantae, 2,127 Fungi, 131 Chromista, 80 Protozoa, 12 Unrecorded, 1 Bacteria. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A V Osmun, A. Allen, 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.

Species	Year	Collected by	Where, as recorded
Cercospora violae Sacc.	1895	Ralph E. Smith	Hothouse, Mass. Agr. College, Amherst
Actias luna Linnaeus, 1758	1896	not recorded
Plathemis lydia (Drury, 1773)	1896	not recorded
Carex argyrantha Tuck. ex Dewey	1781	H. G. Jesup	Amherst in Hampshire Co., and Leverett in Franklin Co., Massachusetts. [Inferred counties from precise loc.]
Carex foenea Willd.	1781	H. G. Jesup	And Leverett
Ustilago nuda (C.N.Jensen) Kellerm. & Swingle	1810	J.E. Humphrey
Ranunculus ambigens S.Watson	1831	S. Shurtleff
Dactylis glomerata L.	1839	S J Ewer
Solidago arguta Aiton	1841	Collector(s): Henry Holmes Babcock, Henry Griswold Jesup	Amherst
Phlebiella vaga (Fr.) P.Karst.	1845	Illegible collector name
Elodea nuttallii (Planch.) H.St.John	1847	H. G. Jesup
Meleagris gallopavo silvestris Vieillot, 1817	1847	William D. Whitney	Mount Tom

All 9,602 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Mines and quarries near this place

10 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 10 workings within 5 miles of West Pelham: 5 past producers, 4 producers, 1 occurrence. 4 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Brick Clay, Clay, Asbestos. 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
Leverett Barite Prospect	Barium-Barite, Lead, Zinc, Copper	Occurrence	Replacement Vein
Pelham Quarry	Asbestos, Emery	Past Producer
Clay Pit	Brick Clay	Producer	Clay
Clay Pit	Brick Clay	Producer	Clay
Clay Pit	Clay	Past Producer
Clay Pit	Clay	Past Producer
Blakeslee-Arpaia-Chapman S&G Co	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
D D Ruxton Co Inc	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer	Sedimentary
Leverett Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Pulpit Hill Road Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer

Every working recorded in Hampshire County

Storms near this place

5 since 2013

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names West Pelham in 5 storm reports between 2013 and 2021: 4 thunderstorm wind, 1 lightning. 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
June 2013	Lightning	West Pelham	$15,000	A house at 57 Harkness Road was struck by lightning, which ignited a fire. The house sustained minor damage before it was extinguished.
May 2021	Thunderstorm Wind	West Pelham	$1,000	In Pelham, MA a tree was down on both Jones Rd. and Amherst Rd.
November 2020	Thunderstorm Wind	West Pelham	$800	In Pelham, a tree and wires were down across North Valley Road.
July 2021	Thunderstorm Wind	West Pelham	$500	In Pelham, a tree was down on Enfield Rd.
July 2021	Thunderstorm Wind	West Pelham	$300	In Pelham, wires were down on Amherst Road near Enfield Road.

Every storm recorded in Hampshire 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 Village	1.4 miles	35
Amherst Center	2.6 miles	42
Amherst	2.8 miles	42
Meads Corner	3.0 miles	32
Mill Valley	3.1 miles	44
Cushman	3.1 miles	42
South Amherst	3.2 miles	44
Dwight	3.6 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.

Wikidata item Q122565666

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 609236. 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.