Town of West Boylston, MA GIS Viewer

Town of West Newbury, MA GIS Viewer

This website is provided by the Town of West Tisbury. The information is updated periodically by the town assessor. The public may search for parcel boundaries and view all the associated assessing data for that parcel. The MVC does not maintain this parcel look-up website.

This layer is a digital raster graphic of the historical 15-minute USGS topographic quadrangle maps of coastal towns in Massachusetts. These quadrangles were mosaicked together to create a single data layer of the coast of Massachusetts and a large portion of the southeastern area of the state. The Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management (CZM) obtained the map images from the Harvard Map Collection. The maps were produced in the late 1890s and early 20th century at a scale of 1:62,500 or 1:63,360 and are commonly known as 15-minute quadrangle maps because each map covers a four-sided area of 15 minutes of latitude and 15 minutes of longitude. A digital raster graphic (DRG) is a scanned image of a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) standard series topographic map. In ArcSDE the image is named IMG_USGS_HIST_COASTAL.

This is a seven-category land-cover map of West Newbury, Massachusetts. The seven categories are: bare soil, coniferous trees, decidous trees, grass, impervious surface, water, and wetlands. Note: Complete metadata is available within the downloaded zip file. This metadata can be viewed with ESRI ArcGIS software, and can be exported to FGDC and ISO metadata formats.

Find local risk levels for Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE) and West Nile Virus (WNV) based on seasonal testing from June to October.

Overlay zoning districts are in addition to standard town zoning. The districts' boundaries and use limitations &/or development constraints are described in the town's zoning bylaw. The MVC generated these digital spatial boundaries based on the best GIS data available at the time of processing.

Some overlay zoning districts are also Districts of Critical Planning Concern. These are zoning districts established by the Martha'sVineyard Commission and adopted by the town at town meeting.

The boundaries are not survey-grade and are intended for planning purposes only.

West Bridgewater's complete zoning by-laws can be found here.General Residential and Farming District: The purpose of the General Residential and Farming District is to provide suitable areas devoted to residential uses and agricultural pursuits.Business District: The purpose of the Business District is to provide areas for the conduct of business activities.Industrial District: The purpose of the Industrial District is to provide areas for industry, research and office and industrial parksTown Center District: The purposes of the Town Center District are to create a traditional town center-like setting in West Bridgewater’s Central Square that has the potential to become more pedestrian-oriented. The District shall primarily include commercial uses providing local goods and services rather than regional goods and services. Buildings shall be of proportionately small scale commensurate with the provision of local goods and services to reinforce the town center setting. Housing is also encouraged in this district on upper floors above ground floor commercial stores along the street frontage.Water Resource Protection District: The purposes of the Water Resource Protection District as an overlay district to all other zoning districts are to protect the public health of the residents of the Town from contamination of existing and potential public groundwater supplies and to protect, preserve and maintain the aquifers and recharge areas of existing and potential groundwater supplies within the Town as sources of public water. FEMA National Flood Hazard Areas (NFHL): This layer is a compilation of effective Flood Insurance Rate Map (FIRM) databases and any Letters of Map Revision (LOMR) that have been issued against those databases since their publication date. The NFHL is updated as new data reaches its designated effective date and becomes valid for regulatory use under the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Users may also visit: FEMA Flood Map Service Center

In the 1800s, the spread of railroads enabled the growth and spread of the United States. Although slow by today’s standards, trains traveled more quickly than other forms of transportation available at the time. By train, it took roughly four days to reach San Francisco from Omaha, Nebraska. By contrast, it had taken covered wagons four to six months, and stagecoaches around a month. In addition to travel, railroads facilitated trade and economic growth. Prior to railroads, people relied on a system of roads and canals for transportation of goods and crops. But this system could be unreliable depending on road conditions, the weather, and many other factors. Trains brought products made in the factories of the East and Midwest to the rest of the country and carried farm produce and livestock to urban markets. The first railroad charter was granted to John Stevens in 1815, and several railroads were in service by 1830. Early rail development was haphazard, financed by individual investors and built without government oversight. Rail gauges, or the distance between rails, could be different depending on the company. This caused a lot of problems for connecting railroads, because only trains designed for that gauge could use those sections of track. Despite miles of track being built, people were generally still skeptical about the usefulness of railroads. In 1843, the Western Railroad of Massachusetts proved to Americans that trains could transport crops and other goods long distances at low costs. By 1861, there were 35,400 kilometers (22,000 miles) of track in the North and only 15,300 kilometers (9,500 miles) in the South. Troops and supplies could be transported quickly using trains. Many battles, like the Battle of Bull Run, were fought over control of Southern railway depots, and tracks were used to move both Confederate and Union soldiers to battles. After the Civil War, railway construction increased significantly. In 1862, Congress passed the Pacific Railway Act with the goal of building a transcontinental railroad. The first, built by the Central Pacific Railroad Company in the West and the Union Pacific in the Midwest, was completed in 1869. Following roughly the route previously taken by the Pony Express and the California Trail, the route was called the Overland Route. Construction was dangerous, as rail crews had to cross mountains, rivers, and other difficult terrain. For this work, the Central Pacific and Union Pacific relied mainly on immigrant labor, recruiting Chinese immigrants in the West and Irish immigrants in the Midwest. Formerly enslaved people and Mormons were also part of these crews. Between 10,000 and 15,000 Chinese workers completed an estimated 90 percent of work on the Central Pacific’s portion of track, facing racism, violence, and discrimination. Chinese workers were often paid less than white workers and were given the most undesirable and dangerous jobs. The Overland Route was one of the first land-grant railroads. To fund construction of such a long and expensive project, the U.S. government gave railroad companies millions of acres of land that they could sell for profit. Following this model, many more railroads were built, including four additional transcontinental railroads. These new railroads took southern and northern routes across the country. In addition to connecting existing cities on the West Coast to the rest of the country, the railroads also influenced where people settled. Trains made multiple stops to refuel, make repairs, and take on more food and water. In return, towns grew around these stops. More than 7,000 cities and towns west of the Missouri River started as Union Pacific depots and water stops. In 1890, the U.S. Bureau of the Census announced that the “Frontier was closed.” The railroads had played a large role in that milestone. This dataset was researched and built by Dr. Jeremy Atack, Professor Emeritus and Research Professor of Economics at Vanderbilt University. His procedure and sources, as well as downloadable files, are documented here.

Town zoning districts for all 7 towns within Dukes County MA. These zoning extents have been mapped over the years (starting in the early 2000s) based upon written descriptions in the town's bylaws. A variety of basemap references and vintages have been used to map the extents of these zones. Data are for planning purposes only and are not survey-grade.This web map also contains Tisbury's "Management Areas" within their Waterfront/Commercial District. These sub-areas are described in detail in the Town's zoning bylaws.The Dukes County Towns include: Aquinnah, Chilmark, Edgartown, Gosnold, Oak Bluffs, Tisbury, and West Tisbury.The Martha's Vineyard Commission makes all efforts to keep these data up to date and as accurate as possible. Please contact the MVC if you believe the data contain inadvertent errors or omissions. The date of last GIS edit is contained within the attribute table of the zoning data.The parcel data are served out by MassGIS and updated by the Town's parcel data consultant. The MVC does not edit or maintain parcel data for any of the Dukes County Towns.

November 2023