An approach is presented for characterizing the urban environment surrounding 1221 US Historical Climatology Network (US HCN) stations using light frequency data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite ProgramOperational Linescan System (DMSP-OLS) sensor. Each grid cell of the DMSPOLS data was thresholded into urban, suburban and rural categories. Categorized cell groups within 15 km of each US HCN station were input into a decision logic to categorize the station. The station categorization was compared with existing and derived categorizations using station metadata and 1990 Census Bureau population density data.