Wortham Gymnasium

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

From the record

“The Wortham Gymnasium was a historic athletic facility on Arkansas Highway 200 in Oak Grove, a rural community in Nevada County east of Rosston. Built in 1935 by a Works Progress Administration crew, this large gymnasium was the only surviving remnant of a major push in the 1920s and 1930s to improve the education of African Americans in Oak Grove.”
Wikipedia article Wortham Gymnasium, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 20 National Register listings published here for Nevada County · category: Building.

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

The listing

Listing status. The Park Service records this property as Removed.
What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 building as contributing to the listing.
Address. AR 200, Oak Grove, 71858
Category. building
Township. Caney township
National Register reference number. 90000667 - assigned by the National Park Service when the property was listed.

Fires near this property

74 since 1997

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 74 fires within 5 miles of Wortham Gymnasium between 1997 and 2020, burning about 1,751 acres in total. 6 started naturally. 22 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	22
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	20
Debris and open burning	13
Equipment and vehicle use	8
Natural	6
Smoking	2
Railroad operations and maintenance	2
Recreation and ceremony	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 September 2011	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	2.0 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named
25 September 2002	Arson/incendiarism	1.0 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named
19 September 2010	Debris and open burning	5.0 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named
13 September 2013	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	25 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named
13 September 2002	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	10 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named
8 August 2012	Natural	5.0 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named
7 August 2015	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named
29 August 2012	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named

Every fire recorded in Nevada County

Mines and quarries near this property

9 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 9 workings within 5 miles of Wortham Gymnasium: 8 past producers, 1 unknown. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Iron, Clay. 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
Unk	Clay	Past Producer
E Ingram	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Mccrea Property	Iron	Past Producer
Rosston Deposits	Iron	Past Producer
Unk	Iron	Past Producer
Unk	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Unk	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Unk	Iron	Past Producer
Unk	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Unknown

Every working recorded in Nevada 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

2 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.

Photograph	Property	Distance	Listed
	Carolina Methodist Church	4.0 miles	1991
	Camden to Washington Road-Rosston Segment	5.0 miles	2009

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 90000667 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Nevada County	All 20 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.