Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
From the record
“The Wilson-Finlay House also known as the Joshua Wilson House and the Finlay House, is a historic plantation house in Gainestown, Alabama, United States. It was added to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage on September 17, 1976.”
Wikipedia article Wilson-Finlay House, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 21 National Register listings published here for Clarke County · listed in 1978 · category: Building.
National Register reference number.78000484- 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
98 since 1994
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 98 fires within 5 miles of Wilson-Finlay House
between 1994 and 2020, burning about 948 acres in total. None started naturally. 38 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
Arson/incendiarism
38
Debris and open burning
27
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
25
Railroad operations and maintenance
2
Equipment and vehicle use
2
Smoking
2
Misuse of fire by a minor
1
Recreation and ceremony
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 National Weather Service names
Gainestown, the town this property stands in, in 6 storm reports between 2003 and 2025: 4 thunderstorm wind, 1 tornado, 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.
The tornado touched down taking a large section of roof off of a wood frame single story home near the center of circulation, pulling a single-wide mobile home off of its foundation on the north side of the circulation, and lifting off the roof of a nearby double-wide mobile home on the south side of the circulation. The tornado circulation quickly widened to 200 yards and strengthened, rolling another single-wide mobile home 60 yards then causing it to disintegrate as it hit a large tree. The mobile home's bent undercarriage was left about 60 yards to the left of the tornado path. The tornado continued to the east and quickly lifted in a pine forest.
High thunderstorm winds blew down several trees near Gainestown, one falling on the roof of a house, producing damage. Half dollar sized hail was also reported with this storm.
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.
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.