Prairie Mission

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.

From the record

“Prairie Mission, also known as the Prairie Mission School and Prairie Institute, was a historic African American school in the community of Prairie, Alabama. The school is the only survivor of the six original Presbyterian mission schools that once operated in Wilcox County.”
Wikipedia article Prairie Mission, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 14 National Register listings published here for Wilcox County · listed in 2001 · category: Building.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 3 buildingss as contributing to the listing.
Address. 1/4 mi. SE. of Jct. of AL 28 and McCall Rd., Catherine, 36728
When was it listed? October 2001
Category. building
Census division. Alberta
National Register reference number. 01001171 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Fires near this property

57 since 1994

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 57 fires within 5 miles of Prairie Mission between 1994 and 2020, burning about 677 acres in total. 2 started naturally. 1 was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Debris and open burning	19
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	16
Equipment and vehicle use	14
Natural	2
Recreation and ceremony	2
Railroad operations and maintenance	1
Other causes	1
Arson/incendiarism	1
Fireworks	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
8 September 2006	Equipment and vehicle use	16 acres	Alabama Forestry Commission	not named
23 September 2016	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Alabama Forestry Commission	20160923-18
17 September 2000	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Alabama Forestry Commission	not named
7 August 2018	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Alabama Forestry Commission	20180807-1
5 August 2014	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	18 acres	Alabama Forestry Commission	SWR-20140805-002
4 August 2006	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Alabama Forestry Commission	not named
4 August 1999	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Alabama Forestry Commission	not named
29 August 2016	Debris and open burning	8.0 acres	Alabama Forestry Commission	20160829-1

Every fire recorded in Wilcox County

Storms near this property

2 since 2003

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Catherine, the town this property stands in, in 2 storm reports between 2003 and 2022: 1 thunderstorm wind, 1 hail. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
April 2003	Thunderstorm Wind	Catherine	$5,000	Several trees were blown down by high winds from a thunderstorm near Catherine.
April 2022	Hail	Catherine	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Wilcox County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

1 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Photograph	Property	Distance	Listed
	Tristram Bethea House	7.6 miles	1985

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 01001171 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Wilcox County	All 14 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.