National Register reference number.75000313- 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
81 since 1994
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 81 fires within 5 miles of St. John's-In-The-Prairie
between 1994 and 2018, burning about 619 acres in total. None started naturally. 15 were 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
25
Arson/incendiarism
15
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
14
Equipment and vehicle use
13
Recreation and ceremony
5
Smoking
5
Railroad operations and maintenance
2
Power generation/transmission/distribution
1
Misuse of fire by a minor
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
4 workings within 5 miles of St. John's-In-The-Prairie: 4 producers.
All of them still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Forkland, the town this property stands in, in 18 storm reports between 1997 and 2024: 7 hail, 6 thunderstorm wind, 5 tornado.
The reports record 2 injuries. 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.
The tornado that had touched down in Marengo County, near the city of Demopolis, moved into Greene County. On its northeast path, it produced sporadic tree damage, and stayed mostly in forested areas. Just before crossing the Black Warrior River for the second time, it struck the Greene County Steam Plant, where 2 men were injured when they were blown down by the wind. A few small buildings were damaged in the same area, and a tractor trailer rig was blown over and moved at least 40 feet. The tornado then moved into Hale County.
The first segment in this tornado initially touched down in Greene County along County Road 20, 2.2 miles east of Forkland. The tornado then moved northeast into Hale County, where it lifted north of State Highway 25, 2.4 miles west of the Bibb County line. In Greene County, the tornado was rated an EF-1, with maximum winds of 105 mph. The tornado snapped hundreds of trees along its path.
Penny size hail fell along CR 20 between Boligee and Forkland. The hail continued to fall south andeast of Forkland all the way to the Black Warrior River.
The tornado began approximately four miles northeast of Forkland in extreme eastern Greene County along County Road 25, just north of Modley Lane. At this location, numerous large hardwoods were uprooted surrounding a site-built home, causing damage to the residence and at least one vehicle. Additionally, metal panels were removed from the roof and sides of a farm outbuilding. A few hundred yards to the north, a well-defined area of significant tree damage occurred, where many dozen to perhaps hundreds of pine trees were snapped. These non-contiguous pockets of well-defined damage suggest the tornado was characterized by multiple vortices. The tornado widened substantially and maintained its multiple vortex nature as it continued to the northeast and moved into Hale County.
The tornado began about 2.4 miles east-southeast of Forkland, just south of County Road 20 near the northern edge of catfish ponds, where a person observed the tornado. From there, it moved north-northeast and ended near Lloyd Chapel Church along County Road 41. Several softwood trees were either snapped or uprooted along the path where wind speeds reached 70 mph. Additionally, a small tornado debris signature was evident in dual-pol data from KBMX radar.
The supercell continued into Greene County. It produced dime to quarter size hail across mostly rural areas around Forkland. The supercell dissipated as it entered eastern Greene County.
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
2 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.
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.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
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.