Massachusetts Town Boundaries

MassGIS December 2007 Massachusetts Town Boundaries vector digital data Admininstrative_Areas.DBO.Mass_Town_Boundaries withheld The political boundary datalayer is a polygon representation of town boundaries created from arcs developed from survey coordinates extracted from the 68-volume Harbor and Lands Commission Town Boundary Atlas for the 351 communities (cities and towns) in Massachusetts. The Atlas was published in the early 1900's and is maintained by the Survey Section of Massachusetts Highway Department. For communities with a coastal boundary, MassGIS has collaborated with Massachusetts Water Resources Authority and the Department of Environmental Protection to complete a 1:12000 scale coastline. The boundary for the coastline was defined as being the upland side of tidal flats and rocky inter-tidal zones. Note that the 351 communities are the official municipal names, not including "villages" or other sections of towns. This datalayer was created for the purposes of providing an up-to-date polygon version of the town boundaries for the 351 communites of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The legislative intent for some boundaries could not be mapped. Boundaries where that is true are identified in the attribute information. en 1880 present publication date In work As needed -73.533318 -69.898590 42.888312 41.231170 111101.262377 1085420.967277 2551196.914000 3148756.972159 None City Boundaries, Town Boundaries, Survey Points, Harbor and Lands Commission, Municipal None Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Massachusetts Not applicable. This data set is a public record. This data set, like all other cartographic products may contain inherent aberrations in geography or thematical errors. The boundaries included in this data set were developed using accepted GIS methodology. Cartographic products can never truly represent real-world conditions due to several factors. These factors can include, but are not limited to: human error upon digitizing, computational tolerance of the computer, or the distortion of map symbology. Because of these factors MassGIS cannot be held legally responsible for personal or property damages resulting from any type of use of the data set. These boundaries are suitable for map display and planning purposes. They cannot be used as a substitute for the work of a professional land surveyor. Jennifer Inzana MassGIS GIS Database Specialist mailing and physical address

251 Causeway Street, Suite 500

Boston MA 02114 USA 617-626-1196 617-626-1249 jennifer.inzana@state.ma.us 0800 - 1630 EST ESRI ArcCatalog 9.3.1.3000 Feature Class There have been no deliberate or intentional omissions or inclusions of polygon attributes within this data set. Curt Crowe (the National Geodetic Survey's liason to Massachusetts) has stated that "these are not survey quality coordinates. The atlas coordinates were only published to the nearest foot on an early datum and the survey work was done over a thirty year span. The 'Lefti" conversion updated the coordinates but it did not improve their accuracy. I would expect these values to be good to within 3 feet (1 meter) in most cases. Some areas will be slightly better and some could be much worse. " Boundary point locations were determined under The Massachusetts Town Corner Project; Updating the Harbor and Land Commission Town Boundary Atlases to the National Spatial Reference System. The Harbor and Land Commission Town Boundary Atlases contain valuable coordinate data on almost every town bound in Massachusetts. The survey fieldwork (conventional optical triangulation) was done between 1878 and 1912. The geographic coordinates of over 3500 corners and 800 control points were computed and published in a series of 68 atlases between 1880 and 1915. These coordinates were published to the hundredth of a second of arc (+ 1 foot) on the U.S. Standard Datum, a predecessor of the North American Datum and the North American Datum of 1927. In 1999 MassHighway and MassGIS joined forces in an effort to create a digital database of the Town Boundary monuments and to update the coordinate values to the geodetic datums in current use; the North American Datum of 1927 (NAD27) and the North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83). The following method was used: -Automate coordinate data for the 3500 corners and 800 control points -Review, compute, and integrate over 150 pieces of Legislation which alter town lines -Identify control points which are in the NGS Data Base -300 common stations found, these points have US Standard Datum, NAD27 and NAD83 coordinate values -Develop a grid of datum shifts from the 300 common points to be applied to the town corner points -Used the National Geodetic Survey?s LEFTI software -Update the data set to NAD27 geographic coordinates with LEFTI software -Compute NAD27 State Plane Coordinates with GPPCGP software -Update the data set to NAD83 geographic coordinates with NADCON software -Compute NAD83 State Plane Coordinates with SPCS83 software -Graphically review the updated coordinate values The updated coordinates for the boundary points cannot be more accurate than the initial coordinates without additional survey. Given the combination of original survey methods, 100 years of exposure to natural forces and the least squares transformation process, the updated coordinates of the town line bounds should be considered to be accurate in the 1-meter (3 foot) range. Once the updated coordinates had been calculated and entered into an Access database it was passed on to MassGIS. MassGIS then queried out the useful boundary coordinates and created a point shapefile from this information (named TOWNSSURVEY_POINT). The coastline was developed through coordination with Massachusetts Water Resources Authority. The source for the coastline was the 1:12000 scale wetlands data layer, with the coastline boundary being the upland-side boundaries of tidal flats and rocky inter-tidal zones. These upland boundaries were photo-interprested from 1:12000 scale color IR photography. The arc layer was created by adjusting the existing 1:25,000 scale town boundaries to the the survey point data (TOWNSSURVEY_POINT). All GIS work was done using the ARCGIS 8.x suite of products. In many areas, the boundary creation was simply a matter of "connecting the dots" from one boundary point to the next. Where boundaries follow a stream/river or road right of way the boundary was approximately delineated using the 2001 Half Meter Color Orthophotography as a base. All boundaries that follow a water body or a ROW are coded in the attribute table in the BND_QUAL field. A complex boundary situation occurs when a survey point is a "witness mark", denoted by the letters WM in the coordinate name. A witness mark point is an "on-land" representation of the next point along the boundary when that next point is in a river, wetland, or pond. A line drawn between the point before a witness mark and a witness mark point gives you the direction of the town boundary as it proceeds to the next point in the river, wetland, or pond. Witness marks are often but not always on the town boundary. The Harbor and Land Commission Town Boundary Atlases included large scale maps of individual boundary point locations. Digital images of these maps taken by MassGIS were also used as a guide in creating the town boundaries layer. Once the boundary arcs had been updated the updated coastline derived from the wetlands data was appending to the new boundary arcs. The attribute information (labels) from the existing 1:25,000 scale town boundary layer was assigned to a point layer (TOWNSSURVEYOLD_LABELS). These point layer attributes were then updated to reflect the fact that the new town boundary layer has more polygons (named TOWNSURVEYNEW_LABELS). Once this layer had been updated, a polygon layer (TOWNSSURVEY_POLY) was created using the Polygon Feature Class from Lines Tool. The inputs into this tool were the arc lines (TOWNSSURVEY_ARC) and the point layer containing the updated attribute information (TOWNSURVEYNEW_LABELS). The layer was updated on May 24, 2006, with adjusted boundaries for moved TOWNSSURVEY_PT points ID1 = 1629 (Needham-Wellesley) and 1933 (Winchendon-NH border). Jennifer Inzana MassGIS GIS Database Specialist mailing and physical address

251 Causeway Street, Suite 500

Boston MA 02114 USA 617-626-1196 617-626-1249 jennifer.inzana@state.ma.us 0800 - 1630 EST Michael Trust MassGIS Sr. GIS DBA mailing and physical address

251 Causeway St., Suite 500

Boston MA 02114 617-626-1195 Boundaries were modified in November and December, 2007, in five locations in Norfolk County, adjusted to match surveyed right-of-way (ROW) plans provided by the Norfolk County Engineering department. Edits included: - Bay Road (Sharon-Stoughton); - Clapboardtree Street (Norwood-Westwood); - Old Post Road (Walpole-Sharon); - Canton Street (Norwood-Westwood and Canton-N-W); - County Street (Dover-Walpole between Medfield and Westwood) ArcGIS 9.2 December 2007 Dataset copied. withheld 20071204 11084100 Dataset copied. withheld 20080515 10251600 Dataset copied. withheld 20080522 10495500 Dataset copied. withheld 20080626 14254900 Dataset copied. withheld 20080722 12151900 Not Applicable Vector Simple FALSE 0 TRUE FALSE coordinate pair 0.000000 0.000000 survey feet North American Datum of 1983 Geodetic Reference System 80 6378137.000000 298.257222 GCS_North_American_1983 NAD_1983_StatePlane_Massachusetts_Mainland_FIPS_2001_Feet 1.000000 Explicit elevation coordinate included with horizontal coordinates DBO.FireDistricts Attribute table defining characteristics of towns within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Feature Class 0 OBJECTID Internal feature number. ESRI Sequential unique whole numbers that are automatically generated. OBJECTID OID 4 10 0 Shape Name String 21 Feature geometry. ESRI Coordinates defining the features. 0 0 SHAPE Feature geometry. ESRI Coordinates defining the features. Shape Geometry 8 0 0 Shape.STArea() Shape.STArea() Double 0 0 0 Shape.STLength() Shape.STLength() Double 0 0 0 MassGIS mailing and physical address

251 Causeway Street, Suite 500

Boston MA 02114 USA Downloadable Data June 2004 unknown 9.775 9.775 20100216 Jennifer Inzana MassGIS mailing and physical address

251 Causeway Street, Suite 500

Boston MA 02114 USA 617-626-1196 FGDC Content Standards for Digital Geospatial Metadata FGDC-STD-001-1998 local time http://www.mass.gov/mgis/townssurvey.htm MassGIS Web Documentation en 20250127 17225300 FALSE 20240730 14323200 20240730 14323200 DBO.FireDistricts 111101.262377 1085420.967277 2551196.914000 3148756.972159 1 002 Projected GCS_North_American_1983 Linear Unit: Foot_US (0.304801) NAD_1983_StatePlane_Massachusetts_Mainland_FIPS_2001_Feet <ProjectedCoordinateSystem xsi:type='typens:ProjectedCoordinateSystem' xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance' xmlns:xs='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema' xmlns:typens='http://www.esri.com/schemas/ArcGIS/3.3.0'><WKT>PROJCS["NAD_1983_StatePlane_Massachusetts_Mainland_FIPS_2001_Feet",GEOGCS["GCS_North_American_1983",DATUM["D_North_American_1983",SPHEROID["GRS_1980",6378137.0,298.257222101]],PRIMEM["Greenwich",0.0],UNIT["Degree",0.0174532925199433]],PROJECTION["Lambert_Conformal_Conic"],PARAMETER["False_Easting",656166.6666666665],PARAMETER["False_Northing",2460625.0],PARAMETER["Central_Meridian",-71.5],PARAMETER["Standard_Parallel_1",41.71666666666667],PARAMETER["Standard_Parallel_2",42.68333333333333],PARAMETER["Latitude_Of_Origin",41.0],UNIT["Foot_US",0.3048006096012192],AUTHORITY["EPSG",2249]]</WKT><XOrigin>-119851500</XOrigin><YOrigin>-94498200</YOrigin><XYScale>37371882.687749371</XYScale><ZOrigin>0</ZOrigin><ZScale>1</ZScale><MOrigin>0</MOrigin><MScale>1</MScale><XYTolerance>0.0032808333333333331</XYTolerance><ZTolerance>0.001</ZTolerance><MTolerance>0.001</MTolerance><HighPrecision>true</HighPrecision><WKID>102686</WKID><LatestWKID>2249</LatestWKID></ProjectedCoordinateSystem> FGDC 1.0 FGDC CSDGM Metadata 500000 50000 Jennifer Inzana MassGIS 617-626-1196 251 Causeway Street, Suite 500 Boston MA 02114 US ArcGIS Metadata 1.0 MassGIS 251 Causeway Street, Suite 500 Boston MA 02114 US Enterprise Geodatabase Feature Class Fire Response Districts MassGIS 2001-03-01T00:00:00 2022-02-04T00:00:00 <DIV STYLE="text-align:Left;"><P><SPAN>Fire response districts-City of Newton, Massachusetts</SPAN></P></DIV> Fire response districts-City of Newton, Massachusetts Commonwealth of Massachusetts Massachusetts City Boundaries Town Boundaries Survey Points Harbor and Lands Commission Municipal Fire Public Safety Municipal Not applicable. This data set is a public record. publication date 1880-01-01 Esri ArcGIS 13.3.0.52636 1 -73.533318 -69.898590 42.888312 41.231170 CIty of Newton, GIS City of Newton, Massachusetts GIS Administrator 1000 Commonwealth Avenue Newton MA 02459 gisinfo@newtonma.gov US 6177961184 CIty of Newton, GIS There have been no deliberate or intentional omissions or inclusions of polygon attributes within this data set. Curt Crowe (the National Geodetic Survey's liason to Massachusetts) has stated that "these are not survey quality coordinates. The atlas coordinates were only published to the nearest foot on an early datum and the survey work was done over a thirty year span. The 'Lefti" conversion updated the coordinates but it did not improve their accuracy. I would expect these values to be good to within 3 feet (1 meter) in most cases. Some areas will be slightly better and some could be much worse. " Boundaries were modified in November and December, 2007, in five locations in Norfolk County, adjusted to match surveyed right-of-way (ROW) plans provided by the Norfolk County Engineering department. Edits included: - Bay Road (Sharon-Stoughton); - Clapboardtree Street (Norwood-Westwood); - Old Post Road (Walpole-Sharon); - Canton Street (Norwood-Westwood and Canton-N-W); - County Street (Dover-Walpole between Medfield and Westwood) Michael Trust MassGIS Sr. GIS DBA 617-626-1195 251 Causeway St., Suite 500 Boston MA 02114 Boundary point locations were determined under The Massachusetts Town Corner Project; Updating the Harbor and Land Commission Town Boundary Atlases to the National Spatial Reference System. The Harbor and Land Commission Town Boundary Atlases contain valuable coordinate data on almost every town bound in Massachusetts. The survey fieldwork (conventional optical triangulation) was done between 1878 and 1912. The geographic coordinates of over 3500 corners and 800 control points were computed and published in a series of 68 atlases between 1880 and 1915. These coordinates were published to the hundredth of a second of arc (+ 1 foot) on the U.S. Standard Datum, a predecessor of the North American Datum and the North American Datum of 1927. In 1999 MassHighway and MassGIS joined forces in an effort to create a digital database of the Town Boundary monuments and to update the coordinate values to the geodetic datums in current use; the North American Datum of 1927 (NAD27) and the North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83). The following method was used: -Automate coordinate data for the 3500 corners and 800 control points -Review, compute, and integrate over 150 pieces of Legislation which alter town lines -Identify control points which are in the NGS Data Base -300 common stations found, these points have US Standard Datum, NAD27 and NAD83 coordinate values -Develop a grid of datum shifts from the 300 common points to be applied to the town corner points -Used the National Geodetic Survey?s LEFTI software -Update the data set to NAD27 geographic coordinates with LEFTI software -Compute NAD27 State Plane Coordinates with GPPCGP software -Update the data set to NAD83 geographic coordinates with NADCON software -Compute NAD83 State Plane Coordinates with SPCS83 software -Graphically review the updated coordinate values The updated coordinates for the boundary points cannot be more accurate than the initial coordinates without additional survey. Given the combination of original survey methods, 100 years of exposure to natural forces and the least squares transformation process, the updated coordinates of the town line bounds should be considered to be accurate in the 1-meter (3 foot) range. Once the updated coordinates had been calculated and entered into an Access database it was passed on to MassGIS. MassGIS then queried out the useful boundary coordinates and created a point shapefile from this information (named TOWNSSURVEY_POINT). The coastline was developed through coordination with Massachusetts Water Resources Authority. The source for the coastline was the 1:12000 scale wetlands data layer, with the coastline boundary being the upland-side boundaries of tidal flats and rocky inter-tidal zones. These upland boundaries were photo-interprested from 1:12000 scale color IR photography. The arc layer was created by adjusting the existing 1:25,000 scale town boundaries to the the survey point data (TOWNSSURVEY_POINT). All GIS work was done using the ARCGIS 8.x suite of products. In many areas, the boundary creation was simply a matter of "connecting the dots" from one boundary point to the next. Where boundaries follow a stream/river or road right of way the boundary was approximately delineated using the 2001 Half Meter Color Orthophotography as a base. All boundaries that follow a water body or a ROW are coded in the attribute table in the BND_QUAL field. A complex boundary situation occurs when a survey point is a "witness mark", denoted by the letters WM in the coordinate name. A witness mark point is an "on-land" representation of the next point along the boundary when that next point is in a river, wetland, or pond. A line drawn between the point before a witness mark and a witness mark point gives you the direction of the town boundary as it proceeds to the next point in the river, wetland, or pond. Witness marks are often but not always on the town boundary. The Harbor and Land Commission Town Boundary Atlases included large scale maps of individual boundary point locations. Digital images of these maps taken by MassGIS were also used as a guide in creating the town boundaries layer. Once the boundary arcs had been updated the updated coastline derived from the wetlands data was appending to the new boundary arcs. The attribute information (labels) from the existing 1:25,000 scale town boundary layer was assigned to a point layer (TOWNSSURVEYOLD_LABELS). These point layer attributes were then updated to reflect the fact that the new town boundary layer has more polygons (named TOWNSURVEYNEW_LABELS). Once this layer had been updated, a polygon layer (TOWNSSURVEY_POLY) was created using the Polygon Feature Class from Lines Tool. The inputs into this tool were the arc lines (TOWNSSURVEY_ARC) and the point layer containing the updated attribute information (TOWNSURVEYNEW_LABELS). The layer was updated on May 24, 2006, with adjusted boundaries for moved TOWNSSURVEY_PT points ID1 = 1629 (Needham-Wellesley) and 1933 (Winchendon-NH border). Jennifer Inzana MassGIS GIS Database Specialist 617-626-1196 617-626-1249 251 Causeway Street, Suite 500 Boston MA 02114 US jennifer.inzana@state.ma.us 0800 - 1630 EST dataset EPSG 5.3(9.0.0) 0 20240730