Bethel House

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

From the record

“The Bethel House is a historic house at Erwin and 2nd Streets in Des Arc, Arkansas. It is a wood-frame structure, with a side-gable roof and weatherboard siding.”
Wikipedia article Bethel House, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 15 National Register listings published here for Prairie County · listed in 1982 · category: Building.

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

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 building as contributing to the listing.
Address. Erwin and 2nd Sts., Des Arc, 72040
When was it listed? December 1982
Category. building
Also known as. Thompson, Charles L., Design Collection TR
Township. White River township
Architect. Charles L. Thompson and associates
National Register reference number. 82000872 - assigned by the National Park Service when the property was listed.

Fires near this property

4 since 2005

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 4 fires within 5 miles of Bethel House between 2005 and 2015, burning about 179 acres in total. None started naturally. 2 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	2
Debris and open burning	1
Equipment and vehicle use	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
15 June 2005	Arson/incendiarism	2.0 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named
26 May 2005	Arson/incendiarism	1.0 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named
14 February 2015	Debris and open burning	117 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named
20 November 2014	Equipment and vehicle use	59 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	PRA419837

Every fire recorded in Prairie County

Storms near this property

60 of 105 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Des Arc, the town this property stands in, in 105 storm reports between 1993 and 2025: 39 flood, 38 thunderstorm wind, 20 hail, 5 flash flood. The reports record 1 injury. 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
March 1996	Thunderstorm Wind	Des Arc	1 hurt	no account filed
June 2008	Thunderstorm Wind	Des Arc	$100,000	Trees were down. One tree was on a house. Signs were knocked down near the baseball field and transformers were knocked out.
September 2012	Thunderstorm Wind	Des Arc	$75,000	Many large trees were blown down, as were power lines. Minor damage occurred to one house and mobile home due to falling trees, while another house had more extensive damage.
August 2009	Thunderstorm Wind	Des Arc	$75,000	The roof of the high school was damaged. Part of the roof and the smokestack on a riverboat restaurant were blown off. A large tree and some power lines were blown down. Downtown Des Arc was without power for most of the day.
October 2007	Thunderstorm Wind	Des Arc	$60,000	A large metal shop building was destroyed. Flying debris from the building struck the adjacent house, sending a board through a wall and knocking out windows.
June 1994	Thunderstorm Wind	Des Arc	$50,000	Thunderstorm winds destroyed a small airplane hangar, damaged a cotton trailer and blew down several tree limbs.
June 2009	Thunderstorm Wind	Des Arc	$40,000	Several trees were uprooted and a barn and a house sustained damage.
August 2014	Thunderstorm Wind	Des Arc	$25,000	Trees and power lines were blown down.
February 2013	Thunderstorm Wind	Des Arc	$25,000	Trees and power lines were blown down in the area around Des Arc. One house had some roofing and siding damage.
June 2009	Thunderstorm Wind	Des Arc	$25,000	Trees were down across several roads, and one of the trees fell on a power line.
June 2009	Thunderstorm Wind	Des Arc	$15,000	Power lines were down across the area.
May 2011	Flood	Des Arc	$10,000	Very heavy rainfall in late April and early May caused the White River at Des Arc to rise to record levels. The highest river level seen since records have been kept was reached around midnight on the 7th, surpassing the old record set in early February, 1949, by over 2 feet.
May 2010	Thunderstorm Wind	Des Arc	$10,000	A metal roof was torn off a large barn.
August 2010	Thunderstorm Wind	Des Arc	$10,000	Power lines were blown down.
June 2009	Thunderstorm Wind	Des Arc	$10,000	A tree fell on the corner of a house.
December 2009	Flood	Des Arc	$10,000	Heavy rainfall on the 23rd and 24th caused the White River at Des Arc to rise above flood stage the evening of the 23rd. The river remained above flood stage into January.
June 2009	Thunderstorm Wind	Des Arc	$10,000	Trees were down along Arkansas Highway 38 west of Des Arc.
May 2012	Thunderstorm Wind	Des Arc	$5,000	A tree was blown down onto power lines.
December 2011	Flood	Des Arc	$5,000	Heavy rainfall at the beginning of December caused the White River at Des Arc to rise above flood stage for several days.
January 2010	Flood	Des Arc	$5,000	This flooding is a continuation of the flooding from December, 2009. Heavy rainfall on the 23rd of December, 2009, caused the White River at Des Arc to rise above flood stage the evening of the 23rd. The river remained above flood stage through the entire month of January.
August 1993	Thunderstorm Wind	Des Arc	$5,000	Several trees were blown down.
April 2011	Flood	Des Arc	$5,000	no account filed
June 2011	Flood	Des Arc	$5,000	no account filed
April 2011	Thunderstorm Wind	Des Arc	$3,000	A flagpole was snapped in half.
June 2011	Thunderstorm Wind	Des Arc	$1,000	Several large tree limbs were blown down.
September 2009	Flash Flood	Des Arc	$1,000	Water was across Arkansas Highway 11 North.
April 1993	Thunderstorm Wind	Des Arc	$500	Thunderstorm winds knocked down a few trees.
April 2025	Flood	Des Arc	-	Major river flooding was observed at Des Arc along the White River.
May 2025	Flood	Des Arc	-	Minor river flooding was observed at Des Arc along the White River.
May 2025	Flood	Des Arc	-	Major river flooding was observed at Des Arc along the White River.
February 2025	Flood	Des Arc	-	Moderate flooding was observed at Des Arc along the White River.
June 2025	Flood	Des Arc	-	Minor river flooding was observed at Des Arc along the White River.
February 2024	Flood	Des Arc	-	Heavy rain in January brought continued flooding into early February 2024 on the White River at Des Arc.
February 2023	Flood	Des Arc	-	Heavy rain in mid February brought flooding to the White River at Des Arc.
May 2023	Flood	Des Arc	-	Flooding along the White River at Des Arc began in mid-February continuing through the early part of May before falling below flood stage.
May 2022	Thunderstorm Wind	Des Arc	-	Reports of multiple trees down on power lines were received from Des Arc. These were relayed via NWSChat.
April 2022	Flood	Des Arc	-	Heavy rain in March brought flooding to the White River at Des Arc that continued through April.
May 2022	Flood	Des Arc	-	Heavy rain brought flooding to the White River at Des Arc in early May.
March 2022	Flood	Des Arc	-	Heavy rain in early March brought flooding to the White River at Des Arc that continued into mid March.
March 2022	Flood	Des Arc	-	Heavy rain brought minor river flooding to the White River at Des Arc. This point remained above flood stage through the remainder of the month.
April 2021	Flood	Des Arc	-	Heavy rain brought flooding to the White River at Des Arc in early April.
May 2021	Flood	Des Arc	-	Heavy rain brought flooding to the White River at Des Arc on May 5, 2021.
March 2020	Flood	Des Arc	-	Flooding continued from February into March on the White River at Des Arc.
January 2020	Flood	Des Arc	-	Heavy rain brought flooding to the White River at Des Arc.
May 2020	Flood	Des Arc	-	Flooding developed in late May on the White River at Des Arc due to heavy rain.
April 2020	Flood	Des Arc	-	Flooding continued on the White River at Des Arc into the first part of April 2020.
February 2020	Flood	Des Arc	-	Flooding continued on the White River at Des Arc from January.
June 2020	Flood	Des Arc	-	Flooding continued into June on the White River at Des Arc.
March 2019	Flood	Des Arc	-	Flooding continued most of March on the White River at Des Arc, from rainfall in February.
April 2019	Flood	Des Arc	-	Heavy rain caused flooding on the White River at Des Arc April 20 to 25, 2019.
February 2019	Flood	Des Arc	-	Heavy rain brought flooding to the White River at Des Arc on February 12.
May 2019	Flood	Des Arc	-	Flooding began in early May and continued through much of May on the White River at Des Arc.
February 2018	Flood	Des Arc	-	Heavy rain brought flooding to the White River.
March 2018	Flood	Des Arc	-	Heavy rain in late February brought flooding to the White River at Des Arc that continued into early March.
June 2017	Flood	Des Arc	-	Heavy rain continued into June on the White River at Des Arc.
April 2017	Flash Flood	Des Arc	-	Widespread flooding was occurring. Multiple roads were underwater...including several bridges. The sheriff's office was discouraging any travel.
May 2017	Thunderstorm Wind	Des Arc	-	Large trees limbs were blown down from severe thunderstorm winds.
May 2017	Flood	Des Arc	-	Heavy rain from April caused flooding in early May on the White River at Des Arc.
August 2017	Flash Flood	Des Arc	-	CO-OP Observer reported street flooding just west of Des Arc.
August 2017	Flash Flood	Des Arc	-	Hwy 323 at Biene Creek is closed. The road is sinking due to a failed culvert as a result of the rain.

Every storm recorded in Prairie 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
Bedford Brown Bethell House	under 500 feet	1978
American Legion Hut-Des Arc	under 500 feet	1995
Prairie County Courthouse	0.1 miles	1977
First Presbyterian Church	0.2 miles	1990
Des Arc High School Home Economics Building	0.3 miles	2021
Frith-Plunkett House	0.5 miles	1982

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 82000872 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Prairie County	All 15 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.