Hartford Commercial Historic District

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.

From the record

“The Hartford Commercial Historic District encompasses about two blocks of buildings in the central business district of Hartford, Arkansas. Extending on the east side of Broadway from just north of Main Street to south of Ludlow Street, they are the only major commercial buildings left from Hartford's boom years of 1880-1920, when coal in the area was mined for use by the railroads.”
Wikipedia article Hartford Commercial Historic District, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 64 National Register listings published here for Sebastian County · listed in 2009 · category: District.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 9 buildingss as contributing to the listing.
Address. Buildings on the E. side of Broadway St. from 12 N. Broadway to 106 S. Broadway, Hartford, 72938
When was it listed? July 2009
Category. district
Township. Township 3
National Register reference number. 09000514 - assigned by the National Park Service when the property was listed.

Fires near this property

110 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 110 fires within 5 miles of Hartford Commercial Historic District between 1992 and 2020, burning about 5,961 acres in total. 5 started naturally. 27 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
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	27
Debris and open burning	27
Arson/incendiarism	27
Equipment and vehicle use	10
Recreation and ceremony	7
Smoking	6
Natural	5
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.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
6 September 2012	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	2.0 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named
4 September 2011	Arson/incendiarism	1.0 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named
4 September 2000	Natural	20 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named
30 September 2002	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named
30 September 2002	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named
25 September 2012	Debris and open burning	10 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named
21 September 2000	Arson/incendiarism	1.0 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named
13 September 2002	Debris and open burning	14 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named

Every fire recorded in Sebastian County

Storms near this property

36 since 1994

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Hartford, the town this property stands in, in 36 storm reports between 1994 and 2026: 18 hail, 13 thunderstorm wind, 3 tornado, 1 lightning. 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 2026	Hail	Hartford	$150,000	Hail up to tennis ball size damaged homes and vehicles.
April 2011	Tornado (EF1)	West Hartford	$100,000	A tornado destroyed a large barn and uprooted trees. Maximum estimated wind in the tornado based on this damage was about 95 mph.
May 2022	Hail	Hartford	$30,000	Golf ball size hail damaged homes and vehicles.
April 2011	Hail	Hartford	$25,000	no account filed
April 2026	Hail	Hartford	$20,000	Hail up to golf ball size damaged homes and vehicles.
May 2020	Hail	Hartford	$20,000	Ping pong ball size hail damaged vehicles and homes.
June 1999	Thunderstorm Wind	Hartford	$20,000	Strong winds caused much damage in the Hartford area. All roads in and out of Hartford, except AR Hwy 96, were blocked by fallen trees and power lines. One residence had an electric meter torn off, a barn lost its roof, and the school gymnasium lost its roof. At least one house in Hartford lost its roof. Numerous tree and power lines were blown down.
March 2019	Hail	Hartford	$15,000	no account filed
May 1998	Lightning	Hartford	$500	Lightning hit a transformer, causing a small power outage in Hartford.
March 1998	Thunderstorm Wind	Hartford	$200	Sheet metal blown off shed
May 1998	Thunderstorm Wind	Hartford	$100	A tree was blown across SH 96 between Mansfield and Hartford.
June 1997	Thunderstorm Wind	Hartford	$100	A severe thunderstorm produced strong winds which downed numerous large tree limbs in Hartford.
March 2026	Thunderstorm Wind	Hartford	-	Strong thunderstorm wind blew down trees onto Highway 45 northeast of Hartford.
April 2025	Flash Flood	Hartford	-	Multiple roads in and around Hartford were closed due to flooding.
June 2024	Thunderstorm Wind	Hartford	-	Strong thunderstorm wind blew down trees.
May 2022	Thunderstorm Wind	Hartford	-	Strong thunderstorm wind snapped large tree limbs.
May 2020	Tornado (EFU)	West Hartford	-	A brief tornado developed in heavily-wooded terrain in southern Sebastian County. The tornado produced a tornadic debris signature on the KSRX WSR-88D, which was likely the result of tree damage, given the fact it occurred in dense forest. The area where the tornado developed was inaccessible by road, therefore the tornado was rated EF-unknown, since the damage could not be reviewed by a survey team.
May 2010	Tornado (EF0)	Hartford	-	A developing storm produced an apparent weak landspout tornado that briefly touched down in open country.
August 2006	Thunderstorm Wind	Hartford	-	Thunderstorm winds estimated at 70 miles an hour blew down trees.
May 2004	Thunderstorm Wind	Hartford	-	Thunderstorm winds estimated at 60 miles an hour blew down large tree limbs.
May 2002	Thunderstorm Wind	Hartford	-	Thunderstorm winds estimated at 70 miles an hour blew trees down.
May 2002	Thunderstorm Wind	Hartford	-	Thunderstorm winds estimated at 60 miles an hour blew down large tree limbs.
March 2009	Hail	Hartford	-	no account filed
May 2005	Thunderstorm Wind	Hartford	-	no account filed
December 2003	Hail	Hartford	-	no account filed
December 2003	Hail	Hartford	-	no account filed
April 2003	Thunderstorm Wind	Hartford	-	no account filed
May 2003	Hail	Hartford	-	no account filed
May 2003	Hail	Hartford	-	no account filed
April 2002	Hail	Hartford	-	no account filed
September 2001	Hail	Hartford	-	no account filed
January 1999	Hail	Hartford	-	no account filed
May 1998	Hail	Hartford	-	no account filed
May 1998	Hail	Hartford	-	no account filed
February 1998	Hail	Hartford	-	no account filed
May 1994	Hail	Hartford	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Sebastian 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

4 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
Jones Memorial Methodist Church	0.2 miles	2011
Hartford Water Tower	0.3 miles	2008
Sebastian County Road 4G Bridge	3.2 miles	1995
Old Huntington Jail	7.9 miles	2008

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 09000514 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Sebastian County	All 64 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.