Photograph of Belle Grove Historic District — Photograph by JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ MD, CC BY-SA 3.0. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Fort Smith's Belle Grove Historic District

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

From the record

“Belle Grove Historic District is a predominantly residential historic district north of the central business district of Fort Smith, Arkansas. This area became an affluent residential area not long after Fort Smith was established in 1842, and was most heavily developed between about 1870 and 1930.”
Wikipedia article Belle Grove Historic District, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 64 National Register listings published here for Sebastian County · listed in 1973 · category: District.

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

The listing

Address. Roughly bounded by N. 4th, N. 9th, N. "B" and N. "H" Streets, Fort Smith, 72901
When was it listed? July 1973
Category. district
Township. Upper township
National Register reference number. 73000392 - assigned by the National Park Service when the property was listed.

Fires near this property

14 since 1996

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 14 fires within 5 miles of Fort Smith's Belle Grove Historic District between 1996 and 2020, burning about 296 acres in total. None started naturally. 5 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	5
Equipment and vehicle use	4
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	2
Debris and open burning	2
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
3 August 2011	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named
3 August 2011	Equipment and vehicle use	1.0 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named
14 June 2010	Equipment and vehicle use	2.0 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named
21 March 2011	Arson/incendiarism	1.0 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named
21 March 1996	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	2.0 acres	Oklahoma Division of Forestry	not named
15 March 2004	Arson/incendiarism	16 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named
13 March 2001	Equipment and vehicle use	29 acres	Oklahoma Division of Forestry	not named
27 February 2006	Debris and open burning	130 acres	Cherokee Nation Tribe	STATE 216

Every fire recorded in Sebastian County

Mines and quarries near this property

10 of 18 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 18 workings within 5 miles of Fort Smith's Belle Grove Historic District: 11 past producers, 7 producers. 7 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Clay, Aggregate, Light Weight, Stone. 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
Rescolite Company	Aggregate, Light Weight	Past Producer
Unk	Stone	Producer
Unknown Sandstone Pit	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
Fort Smith Pit	Clay	Past Producer
Unknown Shale Pit	Clay	Past Producer
Unknown Shale Pit	Clay	Past Producer
Unknown Shale Pit	Clay	Past Producer
Unknown Shale Pit	Clay	Past Producer
Arkhola Dredge & Plant	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Ashland Sand& Gravel	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer

Every working recorded in Sebastian County

Storms near this property

19 since 1993

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Fort Smith, the town this property stands in, in 19 storm reports between 1993 and 1995: 13 hail, 6 thunderstorm wind. 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 1994	Thunderstorm Wind	Fort Smith	$50,000	Numerous trees were blown down.
June 1994	Thunderstorm Wind	Fort Smith	$5,000	Several trees were knocked down near the Fort Smith Airport.
June 1994	Thunderstorm Wind	Fort Smith	$5,000	Thunderstorm winds downed a light pole onto I-540.
May 1993	Thunderstorm Wind	Fort Smith	$5,000	Thunderstorm winds knocked down a few trees.
June 1995	Thunderstorm Wind	Fort Smith	$4,000	no account filed
April 1995	Hail	Fort Smith	-	An isolated severe thunderstorm produced dime size hail in Fort Smith.
May 1995	Hail	Fort Smith	-	Severe thunderstorms moved through northwest Arkansas during the late evening of May 7th. Strong thunderstorm winds downed trees and power lines in Cherokee City and in Sulphur Springs, and trees were also blown down in Hiawasse. Strong thunderstorm winds blew down telephone lines in Eureka Springs, and large tree branches were blown down by 60 mile an hour winds in Huntsville. Nickel-size hail fell at Fort Smith and at Greenwood, and dime-size hail fell two miles west of Lincoln.
May 1995	Hail	Fort Smith	-	no account filed
June 1995	Hail	Fort Smith	-	no account filed
July 1995	Hail	Fort Smith	-	no account filed
March 1995	Hail	Fort Smith	-	no account filed
April 1995	Hail	Fort Smith	-	no account filed
April 1995	Hail	Fort Smith	-	no account filed
April 1995	Hail	Fort Smith	-	no account filed
April 1994	Hail	Fort Smith	-	no account filed
March 1993	Hail	Fort Smith	-	no account filed
April 1993	Hail	Fort Smith	-	no account filed
April 1993	Thunderstorm Wind	Fort Smith	-	no account filed
April 1993	Hail	Fort Smith	-	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

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
W. H. H. Clayton House	under 500 feet	1970
Bonneville House	0.1 miles	1971
Joseph Knoble Brewery	0.2 miles	1972
West Garrison Avenue Historic District (Boundary Increase)	0.4 miles	2001
First Evangelical Lutheran Church	0.4 miles	2017
Fort Smith Masonic Temple	0.4 miles	1992

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 73000392 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.
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.