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

Westford Station, Massachusetts

43 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1886 and the latest in 1988. It stands in Westford town. It lies in ZIP code area 01886. It stands on Keyes Brook. The Survey maps it on the Westford quadrangle.

Westford Station 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 Westford Station, surveyed 1988

Topographic sheet of Westford Station, surveyed 1886

Topographic sheets covering this place

43 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

17,609 words on this township

History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : Containing Carefully Prepared Histories of Every City and Town in the County, published 1880 names this settlement in its chapter on Westford Town. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

The surface of the town is broken by numerous hills, the highest of which is Prospect Hill, about tJiree hundred feet above the level of Stony Brook. Others are known as Francis, Providence, Tadmuck, Bear, Sparks, Rattlesnake, Kissacook, Snake- Meadow, Conscience, Flushing, Oak, and Blake's, none of thein of any considerable ])rominence. The pretty little stream that meanders though the town is worthy of a more characteristic name than Stony Brook. Its charming valley below Westford Station appeals to the sense of beauty in every beholder. Several ponds in the north part sparkle in the sunlight of the long summer day. The largest, Nebunnussuck, half a mile from Brookside, has an area of 123 acres. It is much frequented by excursion parties from Lowell and elsewhere. Long-souglit-for Pond comes next, with an area of 107 acres; then Keyes, 40 acres; Bulge's, 25 acres; Flushing, 20 acres. That part of Forge Pond which lies in Westford comprises an area of 104 acres. The soil in the south and east parts of the town is good ; in the north part it is sandy.

Passage source: History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : Containing Carefully Prepared Histories of Every City and Town in the County, published 1880.

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 Westford Town - it names this place 1 more 1 time.

Fires near this place

39 since 2015

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 39 fires within 5 miles of Westford Station between 2015 and 2020, burning about 21 acres in total. 1 started naturally. 1 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
Debris and open burning	18
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	16
Recreation and ceremony	2
Natural	1
Other causes	1
Arson/incendiarism	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 2015	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
17 August 2020	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
24 June 2017	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.5 acres	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
18 June 2016	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	NEEDHAM
9 May 2015	Other causes	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
8 May 2015	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
5 May 2020	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named
3 May 2015	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control	not named

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Middlesex County

Specimens collected near this place

12 of 496 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. Museums hold 496 specimens collected within 10 miles of Westford Station between 1898 and 1975: 302 Animalia, 76 Plantae, 64 Protozoa, 48 Fungi, 3 Unrecorded, 3 Chromista. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A. B. Seymour, 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
Galium tinctorium (L.) Scop.	1899	not recorded
Muhlenbergia uniflora (Muhl.) Fernald	1899	E. F. Williams
Oryzopsis asperifolia Michx.	1899	J M Greenman
Araiospora pulchra Thaxt.	1900	Thaxter, R.	Stony Brook
Boletus frostii J.L.Russell	1900	A. W. Flint
Cenangium tuberculiforme Ellis & Everh.	1900	Rorer, J. B.	East Billerica
Alabama argillacea (Hübner, 1823)	1930	not recorded	Lowell
Alopecurus aequalis Sobol.	1930	M. L. Fernald; C. A. Weatherby
Carex communis var. communis	1930	E. J. Palmer	Rocky banks, top of Hemlock Hill. [Inferred locality from precise loc.]
Carex nigra (L.) Reichard	1930	R J Eaton
Cistothorus stellaris (J.F.Naumann, 1823)	1930	Collector(s): James Lee Peters	Harvard

All 496 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Mines and quarries near this place

10 of 30 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 30 workings within 5 miles of Westford Station: 18 past producers, 10 producers, 2 plants. 12 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Granite, Stone, Crushed/Broken, Graphite. 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
Fiber Matls Plant--Graniteville, Ma	Graphite	Plant
Chelmsford Mill	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Plant
West Chelmsford Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Producer
Fletcher Westford Quarry	Granite	Producer
Forest Road Quarry	Granite	Past Producer
Guilmette Bros Granite	Granite	Past Producer	Granite
H E Fletcher Co	Granite	Past Producer	Granite
Le Masurier Granite Quarry Inc	Granite	Past Producer	Granite
Le Masurier Quarry and Mill	Granite	Producer
North Chelmsford Quarry	Granite	Producer

Every working recorded in Middlesex County

Storms near this place

3 since 2014

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Westford Station in 3 storm reports between 2014 and 2024: 2 thunderstorm wind, 1 flash flood. 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
July 2014	Thunderstorm Wind	Westford Station	$25,000	In Westford, power lines were downed on Lowell Road and high tension power lines were downed on Long South Pond. Trees were downed in North Chelmsford on Wellman Avenue. In Dracut, a tree was downed on Lake View Avenue and a tree was snapped in half at the intersection of Mammoth Road and Mill St, which brought wires down. A tree was downed in Billerica across one lane of Roger Street and High Street. In Lowell, a tree and wires were downed on Pawtucket Boulevard and trees were downed on Hudy Street. In Tewksbury, one tree was downed on Whipple Road and another tree was downed on Royer Street.
August 2024	Thunderstorm Wind	Westford Station	$200	In Chelmsford, there were wires down on Hitchinpost Rd.
July 2023	Flash Flood	Westford Station	-	In Westford, there were 4 inches of water in a basement with 6-12 inches of flooding in a driveway on Polley Rd.

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
Camp Cielo Celeste	0.6 miles	43
Camp Nashoba	0.8 miles	43
Camp Wakitatina	0.8 miles	43
Westford	1.2 miles	43
Nabnasset	1.3 miles	43
Graniteville	1.4 miles	43
Brookside Station	1.5 miles	43
Whidden Corner	2.2 miles	50

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 Q122552120

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 611302. 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.