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Pond Hill School
Built in 1857 in the Greek Revival architecture. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1989. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“The Pond Hill School is a historic school building at 65 Old Paine Hollow Road in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. Built in 1857, it is the last of Wellfleet's 19th-century district schools to be built, and to survive relatively intact.”
Wikipedia article Pond Hill School, CC BY-SA 4.0.
one of 145 National Register listings in Barnstable County · listed in 1989 · category: Building · built in 1857, Greek Revival architecture.
National Register reference number.89000222- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
Fires near this property
74 since 1992
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 74 fires within 5 miles of Pond Hill School between
1992 and 2020, burning about 34 acres in total. 2 started naturally. 2 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/undetermined
26
Recreation and ceremony
12
Debris and open burning
9
Equipment and vehicle use
7
Smoking
6
Power generation/transmission/distribution
5
Fireworks
3
Arson/incendiarism
2
Natural
2
Misuse of fire by a minor
1
Other causes
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 2,907 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Pond Hill School between 1819 and
1975: 1,952 Animalia, 699 Plantae, 84 Chromista, 63 Bacteria, 59 Unrecorded, 50 Fungi. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A. R. Alan Hodgdon Hodgdon, A. R. Hodgdon, A. R. Hodgdon; G. B. Rossbach 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.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
1 working within 5 miles of Pond Hill School: 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.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Wellfleet, the town this property stands in, in 10 storm reports between 1997 and 2020: 5 hail, 4 thunderstorm wind, 1 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.
At 7:27 PM EST, the Beachcomber Restaurant in Wellfleet was evacuated due to flooding in the restaurant. At 7:35 PM EST, a car was floating in flood waters at the junction of Hamblin Farm Road and Chequessett Neck Road in Wellfleet. At 7:39 PM EST a car was towed from flood waters on Cove Road. At 8:06 PM EST a basement was flooded on Kendrick Avenue.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
From the nomination file
5,353 words on record
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Statement of significance
Certifying official has considered the significance of this property in relation to other properties: nationally statewide X locally Applicable National Register Criteria C D Criteria Considerations (Exceptions) C D E F G Areas of Significance (enter categories from instructions) EDUCATION ARCHITECTURE SOCIAL HISTORY Period of Significance 1857-1880 1888-ca. 1930 Cultural Affiliation N/A Significant Dates N/A Significant Person N/A Architect/Builder RESIDENTS OF SOUTH WELLFLEET State significance of property, and justify criteria, criteria considerations, and areas and periods of significance noted above.
The Pond Hill School,Wellfleet, Massachusetts, is the last of twelve district schoolhouses built in the town of Wellfleet and the earliest extant schoolhouse that maintains its original appearance. Located in South Wellfleet village, Pond Hill School was built by South Wellfleet residents during the town's population boom in the mid-19th century, and served as the neighborhood district school for twenty-three years. Later used as the home of a church auxiliary group, a local library, and the South Wellfleet Neighborhood Association, theschoolhouse has served as a focus for South Welifleet community identity for more than a century. A severe Greek Revival style building, the Pond Hill School is a well-preserved example of 19th-century vernacular schoolhouse design on Out Cape Cod.
Despite intense residential development that has encroached upon the schoolhouse's originally expansive wooded setting, the relationship between the schoolhouse and the immediately surrounding landscape has been maintained. Retaining integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, and association, the Pond Hill School fulfills Criteria A and C of the National Register of Historic Places and is important on the local level. Residents of South Wellfleet have always considered their community distinct from Wellfleet Center, the town's civic and institutional focus located on Duck Creek to the northwest. In 1646 the bulk of the Lower Cape was known as Nauset (later Eastham).
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 89000222, 22 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
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.
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