Photograph by National Park Service inventory, Public domain. Via
Wikimedia Commons.
Big Buffalo Valley Historic District
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.
From the record
“The Big Buffalo Valley Historic District, also known as the Boxley Valley Historic District, is notable as a cultural landscape in Buffalo National River. It comprises the Boxley Valley in northern Arkansas, near the town of Ponca.”
Wikipedia article Big Buffalo Valley Historic District, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 16 National Register listings published here for Newton County · listed in 1987 · category: District.
National Register reference number. 87000110 - assigned by the National Park Service when the property was listed.
Fires near this property
69 since 1994
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 69 fires within 5 miles of Big Buffalo Valley Historic District
between 1994 and 2020, burning about 3,584 acres in total. 6 started naturally. 18 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
21
Arson/incendiarism
18
Debris and open burning
13
Recreation and ceremony
8
Natural
6
Power generation/transmission/distribution
2
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.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
17 workings within 5 miles of Big Buffalo Valley Historic District: 15 past producers, 1 prospect, 1 occurrence.
None of them still produces. What was taken out: Zinc, Sand and Gravel, Construction, Manganese, Lead, Zinc. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Ponca, the town this property stands in, in 12 storm reports between 1994 and 2022: 6 thunderstorm wind, 5 hail, 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.
Heavy rainfall caused rapid rises on the Buffalo River near Ponca. The river rose over 14 ft in a short period. Cars near the river in campgrounds were flooded.
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
3 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.
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.
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