Fort Payne Boom Town Historic District

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.

From the record

“The Fort Payne Boom Town Historic District is a historic district in Fort Payne, Alabama, United States. The district encompasses five properties built around 1889, when Fort Payne was undergoing huge growth owing to the area's mineral deposits.”
Wikipedia article Fort Payne Boom Town Historic District, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 13 National Register listings published here for DeKalb County · listed in 1989 · category: District.

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

The listing

Address. Roughly Gault St. from 4th St. NE. to 6th St. NE., Fort Payne, 35967
When was it listed? April 1989
Category. district
Census division. Fort Payne
National Register reference number. 89000308 - 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

103 since 1997

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 103 fires within 5 miles of Fort Payne Boom Town Historic District between 1997 and 2020, burning about 889 acres in total. None started naturally. 39 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	39
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	31
Debris and open burning	31
Equipment and vehicle use	1
Smoking	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
9 September 2010	Debris and open burning	20 acres	Alabama Forestry Commission	not named
6 September 2019	Equipment and vehicle use	3.0 acres	Alabama Forestry Commission	20190906-14
23 September 2010	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	8.0 acres	Alabama Forestry Commission	not named
22 September 2010	Debris and open burning	2.0 acres	Alabama Forestry Commission	not named
21 September 2010	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Alabama Forestry Commission	not named
20 September 2010	Arson/incendiarism	15 acres	Alabama Forestry Commission	not named
20 September 2010	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	Alabama Forestry Commission	not named
19 September 2003	Arson/incendiarism	12 acres	Alabama Forestry Commission	not named

Every fire recorded in DeKalb County

Mines and quarries near this property

10 of 19 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 19 workings within 5 miles of Fort Payne Boom Town Historic District: 8 past producers, 5 occurrences, 3 unknowns, 2 prospects. 1 still produces. What was taken out: Iron, Kaolin, Stone, Crushed/Broken, Clay, Fullers Earth. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
Dek 4 Clay Prospect	Clay	Prospect
Ladd Mine	Clay, Fullers Earth	Past Producer
Browder Mine	Kaolin	Past Producer
Fort Payne Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Producer
New Ladd Mine	Kaolin	Past Producer
Pearsall Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
Dekalb County	Iron	Unknown
Fort Payne Area	Iron	Past Producer	Hematite
Fort Payne Area-B	Iron	Past Producer	Hematite
Fort Payne Mine	Iron	Past Producer

Every working recorded in DeKalb County

Storms near this property

3 since 1995

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Fort Payne, the town this property stands in, in 3 storm reports between 1995 and 1996: 1 hail, 1 lightning, 1 flash flood. 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
June 1996	Lightning	Fort Payne	$40,000	no account filed
June 1996	Flash Flood	Fort Payne	$10,000	no account filed
January 1995	Hail	Fort Payne	-	Small hail reported as pea-size fell in Fort Payne along with wind gusts around 40 to 45 mph according to emergency management officials.

Every storm recorded in DeKalb 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

6 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.

Property	Distance	Listed
Alabama Great Southern Railroad Passenger Depot	under 500 feet	1971
Fort Payne Residential Historic District	0.2 miles	1988
Fort Payne Opera House	0.2 miles	1970
Alabama Builder's Hardware Manufacturing Company Complex (Boundary Increase)	0.2 miles	1992
Alabama Builders' Hardware Manufacturing Company	0.3 miles	1986
Fort Payne Main Street Historic District	0.3 miles	1989

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 89000308 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
DeKalb County	All 13 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.
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.