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Land of 2,922 Lakes
By adamg on Wed, 03/12/2014 - 10:34pm
You never know when you'll need a listing of the 2,922 lakes and ponds in Massachusetts.
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You never know when you'll need a listing of the 2,922 lakes and ponds in Massachusetts.
Comments
Profoundly inaccurate
They have a bunch of ponds listed in the wrong towns.
Frog Pond is not in Cambridge, but Boston.
Halcyon (not Halecyon) is in Cambridge.
Fresh Pond is not in Watertown, but Cambridge.
Jerry's Pond is in Cambridge, not Somerville.
Chandler Pond is in Brighton, not Watertown...
I could go on, but honestly, this is useless.
Yeah...just looking at my
Yeah...just looking at my hometown, seems like some are missing...
And Jamaica Pond is entirely
And Jamaica Pond is entirely within Boston proper; it does not touch Brookline (but it does come within about 800 feet). Whatever happened to respecting the boundaries of cities proper?
They're Trying To Sell Their Mapping Product ...
... but instead, it just demonstrates how awful it is.
Not to mention, Frog Pond isn
Not to mention, Frog Pond isn't really a Pond.
No lakes or ponds in Revere, Chelsea, Everett
Except it falsely lists one "historical" pond in Chelsea. Mill Pond. Uh, no. Mill Pond was in Boston proper.
They need to
get their Flax straight.
IT wireheads and maps
..seem to have their issues. I am an extensive user of google maps and of course they suck but they are killer compared with their competitors.
I even do edits they eventually approve.
Old USGS 7.5 topo maps had this covered and they made great wall art.
Maybe it is because they get hung up on scaling code details and blow off the reality details.
shocking
someone downloaded govt-supplied national data and repackaged it for sale without error checking or adding anything of value to the data itself?? I had no idea that this could possibly happen!!
Wicked Bizarre, ain't it?
When one of my (former) clients hired another firm who claimed I'd downloaded all the information I coded. Which code was accessing NWS data for specific weather stations, polled every 10 minutes. Damn straight the information was downloaded. Every 10 minutes.
Then they claimed that I'd downloaded all the scripting, which was bizarre since it had © me on each script.
It turns out they were selling a weather package that they were paying someone for, which did exactly the same thing my code did, with better graphics. Who'da thunk?
I just checked this site again; they got exactly one pond right in Watertown (Sawins), but completely missed Walker Pond off of Waltham Street. And Auburn Lake, Willow Pond, and Halcyon Pond (last shared with Cambridge), all within Mount Auburn Cemetery. Plus the unnamed water hazards at Oakley Country Club and the Gore Estate.
While I can easily believe that there are 2,922 lakes and ponds in the Commonwealth, I don't think their listing is doing anyone any good. Hope NOBODY buys this piece of crap.
It might help
If Massachusetts could decide what is a "pond" and what is a "lake".
Seems like anything could be either depending on the size of the body of water where the people who imposed European names on the landscape came from.
You think "pond" or "lake" poses a problem, eh?
It's worse than you think. There are not just ponds...but also Great Ponds.
And soon we'll see vernal pools...
becoming lewd dance halls for amorous toads.
Where is Boston?
No listings for Boston, or under neighborhood names. Must be why they had to put Jamaica Pond in Brookline.
Well Massachusetts isn't the
Well Massachusetts isn't the only place where the names of geographic features don't match the scientific definition. Does it bother you that the Hudson River is actually a fjord up to Albany? Or that the East River isn't a river at all? Or that the Missouri River and the portion of the Mississippi River below St. Louis are actually a single river (the longest in North America scientifically), and the part of the Mississippi above St. Louis is a tributary to that river? Or that the Ohio River ends arbitrarily in downtown Pittsburgh, instead of following its primary source by volume: the Allegheny River (that one does bother me). Or that Rhode Island is neither a road nor an island (okay, end of list.)? Anyway, we're stuck with historical names forever, even if they were decided by colonial settlers who knew nothing about geology.
Free Mapping of Ponds
MassGIS, the State's mapping agency, has free online mapping at:
http://maps.massgis.state.ma.us/map_ol/oliver.php