Middlesex CountyMassachusetts
Holliston, Massachusetts
1 high-hazard dam is rated in poor or unsatisfactory condition. Bedrock sits a median 20 ft down across 201 logs, shallower than the Massachusetts median of 24 ft.
- Live · as of Sep 11, 2026
- 9 public sources · method
- ← All towns
Median depth to bedrock
20 ft
middle half 10–29 ft · 201 logs
Bridges rated poor
0
of 2 inventoried
State resilience grants
$1.2M
2 awards on file
Poor high-hazard dams
1
National Inventory of Dams
01 · Dams & disasters
1 high-hazard dam needs work
FEMA Public Assistance is reported by county, so the figure below is Middlesex County-wide context, not a Holliston number.
| Dam | Condition | Built |
|---|---|---|
| Houghton Pond DamJar Brook | Poor | 1898 |
High hazard potential means failure would probably cost lives — it rates the consequences, not the dam’s condition.
FEMA Public Assistance, Middlesex County
$656M
Federal share obligated across 1,729 projects in 12 declared disasters since 2010. The largest category is emergency protective measures (97%); roads & bridges took $1.2M.
02 · Ground
Rock turns up a median 20 ft down
From 201 depth-to-rock records inside Holliston (MassGIS / MGS borings & well logs). Logs cluster where people drill wells and bore for roads, so treat this as the town’s pattern, not a site answer.
Half of Holliston's logs reach rock between 10 and 29 ft
Depth to bedrock: 10th–90th percentile whisker, middle-half box, median tick; dashed line = Massachusetts median.
median 20 ftMA 24 ft
02040 ft
n = 201 logsSource: MassGIS / MGS borings & well logs
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| Depth to rock (ft) | Logs |
|---|---|
| 0–5 | 18 |
| 5–10 | 32 |
| 10–20 | 49 |
| 20–50 | 73 |
| 50–100 | 24 |
| 100+ | 5 |
Rock within 10 ft
28%
of logs (23% across Massachusetts). Shallow rock means ledge in excavations, refusal for driven piles and rock anchors rather than soil nails; deep ground means taller shoring and more groundwater. 14% of logs here go past 50 ft.
03 · Money & permits
$1.2M in state resilience grants, 2 awards
| Project | Year | Award |
|---|---|---|
| Factory Pond Dam Rehabilitation | FY2022 | $1.0M |
| Houghton Pond Dam Design Alternatives Assessment | FY2026 | $153K |
Ground-related permits in open data
2
Permits in the city’s open-data portal that mention retaining walls, excavation or foundations. Only a handful of portals are read, so this counts what is published, not everything built.
04 · Bridges
None of Holliston's 2 bridges is rated poor
Every highway bridge and large culvert in the 2025 National Bridge Inventory that stands inside Holliston. Median age 26 years.
100% good, 0% poor
FHWA good / fair / poor rating — the lowest of deck, superstructure, substructure or culvert.
- Good2 · 100%
- Fair0 · 0%
- Poor0 · 0%
n = 2 structuresSource: FHWA National Bridge Inventory 2025
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| Built | Structures |
|---|---|
| 2000s | 2 |
05 · Next door
Holliston and the 6 towns that border it
A dash means no data for that layer, not zero.
| Town | Poor bridges | Rock depth |
|---|---|---|
| Holliston, MA | 0 / 2 | 20 ft |
| Hopkinton, MA | 4 / 16 | 15 ft |
| Milford, MA | 1 / 13 | 10 ft |
| Ashland, MA | 1 / 11 | 17 ft |
| Millis, MA | 0 / 5 | 39 ft |
| Medway, MA | 0 / 4 | 35 ft |
| Sherborn, MA | 0 / 1 | 19 ft |
Where these numbers come from
Method, sources & caveats
Holliston is the Census county subdivision 2501730700 (Middlesex County). Every record is placed here by its coordinates, not by the place name the source uses.
- Towns are Census county subdivisions: cities, towns, plantations, and Maine/New Hampshire unorganized territories and townships. Every record is placed in a town by its coordinates (point-in-polygon), not by the source's own place label — so a bridge in Roxbury counts for Boston and a well in 'North Waltham' counts for Waltham.
- Bridges: FHWA NBI 2025, highway structures ≥ 20 ft including large culverts. 'Poor' is FHWA's good/fair/poor rating (lowest of deck, superstructure, substructure or culvert ≤ 4). Percent-poor is shown only for towns with at least 5 structures.
- Depth to bedrock is the median of driller- and boring-reported depths in the town, shown only where at least 10 logs exist. Water-well logs over-sample rural lots and hilltops; one town median never describes a particular site.
- Bedrock depths use the same state databases and filters as the Bedrock & soils module (bedrock wells and borings that reached rock, 0 < depth ≤ 400 ft, exact re-filings dropped), but every log is placed in a town by its coordinates rather than the driller's town field, so town counts can differ slightly between the two pages. Connecticut and Rhode Island have no statewide public well-log database with depths.
- Dams: only high-hazard-potential dams whose latest condition assessment is Poor or Unsatisfactory are counted (live NID). Connecticut and Rhode Island assessments may lag.
- FEMA Public Assistance dollars are federal share obligated for disasters declared since 2010, reported by county — they are county context, not a town figure.
- Grant awards are Massachusetts only (EEA Dam & Seawall program, MVP Action grants, CZM Coastal Resilience). Other states' programs are not yet included.
- Ground-related permit counts cover only the municipal portals the pipeline reads (Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Worcester, Framingham, Providence, Portsmouth, Hartford and a few others) — an absent count means 'not covered', not zero.
- Data as of
- Sep 11, 2026
- Generated
- Sep 11, 2026
- Records
- 367,748
- Refresh
- Live pull · weekly
- U.S. Census Bureau cartographic boundary files — county subdivisions (2024, 1:500k)Public domain
- FHWA National Bridge Inventory (2025 delimited files)Public domain
- USACE National Inventory of DamsPublic domainHigh-hazard dams rated Poor or Unsatisfactory (live NID).
- USGS U.S. Landslide InventoryPublic domain
- MassGIS / Massachusetts Geological Survey — Bedrock Data PointsPublic recordBorings and well logs that reached rock (MassDEP well drillers, USGS, MWRA, MassDOT…); seismic/HVSR and map-derived shallow-bedrock/outcrop points excluded.
- NH DES Water Well Inventory, Maine Geological Survey Wells Database, Vermont DEC well recordsPublic recordBedrock wells only; driller-reported depth to bedrock / overburden thickness.
- OpenFEMA Public Assistance Funded Projects Details (v2)Public domain
- MA EEA / CZM grant awards — Dam & Seawall, MVP Action, CZM Coastal ResiliencePublic record
- Municipal open-data permit portals (Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Providence, Portsmouth, others)Public recordOnly permits flagged as ground-related (retaining walls, excavation, foundations) are counted.
Published by Earth Support Corp as a public resource. Regional statistics for planning and curiosity. They are not an engineering report, a bid recommendation or a statement about any particular site, firm or project. Spot an error? Tell us and we will correct it. Full method: methodology.