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

Woods Hole, Massachusetts

38 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1886 and the latest in 1994. It stands in Falmouth town. It lies in ZIP code area 02543. It stands on Parker Flats. The Survey maps it on the Woods Hole quadrangle. 834 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 20 feet above sea level.

Woods Hole within Barnstable County

Population over time

3 figures

Woods Hole fell from 925 to 834 between 2000 and 2020. These are the recorded population figures Wikidata holds for this place, reached through the Geographic Names Information System number this page is keyed on rather than by name, so they belong to this place and not to another of the same name. Most are census counts, but not all are: an early figure may be a founding or settlement estimate. The change column is computed, and is left blank where more than 20 years separate a figure from the one before it, because a gap that long is not a change between two counts.

YearPeople Change
2000925
2010781-144 (-16%)
2020834+53 (+7%)

Then and now

1886 to 1994

The same ground, surveyed 108 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.

Topographic sheet of Woods Hole, surveyed 1994
Topographic sheet of Woods Hole, surveyed 1886

Topographic sheets covering this place

38 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

40 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 Falmouth Town covers the township.

Read the chapter on Falmouth Town - 40 words.

Fires nearby

25 since 2015

The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 25 fires within 5 miles of Woods Hole between 2015 and 2020, burning about 6 acres in total. None 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 burning10
Missing data/not specified/undetermined9
Recreation and ceremony4
Equipment and vehicle use1
Arson/incendiarism1

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
7 September 2018Debris and open burningunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
2 September 2018Debris and open burningunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
19 September 2020Recreation and ceremonyunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
17 September 2020Recreation and ceremonyunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
16 September 2020Recreation and ceremonyunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
1 September 2018Missing data/not specified/undeterminedunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
4 August 2017Missing data/not specified/undeterminedunder an acreMassachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Controlnot named
26 August 2018Debris and open burningunder 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 9,217 shown

Museums hold 9,217 specimens collected within 10 miles of Woods Hole between 1791 and 1975: 4,620 Animalia, 2,854 Plantae, 777 Chromista, 768 Fungi, 154 Bacteria, 23 Unrecorded, 21 Protozoa. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A B Seymour, A. A. Cohen, A. B. Harvey 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
Specimen of Enallagma civile (Hagen, 1861)Enallagma civile (Hagen, 1861)1899J. BenedictWoods Hole
Specimen of Erythemis simplicicollis (Say, 1840)Erythemis simplicicollis (Say, 1840)1899J. BenedictWoods Hole
Specimen of Lestes unguiculatus Hagen, 1861Lestes unguiculatus Hagen, 18611899J. BenedictWoods Hole
A photograph of the species Drosera filiformis, not of this specimenDrosera filiformis var. filiformis1791not recorded
A photograph of the species Polysiphonia flexicaulis, not of this specimenPolysiphonia flexicaulis (Harvey) F.S.Collins1839unknownWoods Hole
A photograph of the species Ectocarpus littoralis, not of this specimenEctocarpus littoralis (L.) Lyngb.1841B. F. D. RunkWoods Hole, Nobska Point, wash
A photograph of the species Polysiphonia fibrata, not of this specimenPolysiphonia fibrata (Dillwyn) Harvey1844Collector unknown
A photograph of the species Alosa aestivalis, not of this specimenAlosa aestivalis (Mitchill, 1814)1852not recordedWood's Hole, Massachusetts.
A photograph of the species Clupea harengus, not of this specimenClupea harengus Linnaeus, 17581852not recordedWood's Hole, Massachusetts.
A photograph of the species Menidia menidia, not of this specimenMenidia menidia (Linnaeus, 1766)1852not recordedWood's Hole, Massachusetts.
A photograph of the species Prionotus evolans, not of this specimenPrionotus evolans (Linnaeus, 1766)1852not recordedWood's Hole, Massachusetts.
A photograph of the species Ulva clathrata, not of this specimenUlva clathrata (Roth) C.Agardh1852G. W. Perry

All 9,217 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Mines and quarries nearby

1 within 5 miles

The federal mineral resources record lists 1 working within 5 miles of Woods Hole: 1 past producer. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Where SiteCommodity StatusRecorded
Falmouth Concrete and Builders SuppSand and Gravel, ConstructionPast ProducerSedimentary

Every working recorded in Barnstable County

Storms nearby

5 since 2008

The National Weather Service names Woods Hole in 5 storm reports between 2008 and 2024: 2 thunderstorm wind, 1 lightning, 1 tornado, 1 hail. 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
June 2015Thunderstorm WindWoods Hole$25,000Numerous trees were downed on the golf course at Woods Hole Golf Club.
September 2021Thunderstorm WindWoods Hole$5,000Three or four small sailboats were flipped over on moorings due to rapid wind shift and very gusty winds in Woods Hole Harbor. Report per social media and confirmed by the Harbormaster.
August 2008LightningWoods Hole$5,000Lightning struck a tree and the automated sprinkler system at Woods Hole Golf Club.
October 2018Tornado (EF0)Woods Hole$300A waterspout in Vineyard Sound came ashore in Woods Hole, MA then quickly dissipated. Eyewitness reports at the Woods Hole Golf Club described a swirling mass that lofted four wooden Adirondack chairs into the air and deposited them 500 feet away onto a tennis court. There was no other damage. At the same time, two nearby weather stations reported wind gusts of 56 (Woods Hole Yacht Club) and 65 mph (Mesonet site at Woods Hole Passage Light). There was also a report that a workman's circular saw was blown away by strong winds on Penzance Road in Falmouth, but the survey team was unable to find any evidence of the tornado there.
May 2024HailWoods Hole-In Woods Hole hail of 1.25 inches fell.

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
Quissett1.7 miles38
Racing Beach2.2 miles38
Sippewisset3.0 miles38
Falmouth3.5 miles41
Saconesset Hills4.0 miles38
Falmouth Heights4.3 miles41
Mara Vista4.8 miles41
Teaticket4.9 miles41

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 Woods HoleAn encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q747172The 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 617060. 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.