Shafter Research Station

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. 10 historic topographic surveys show this location, the earliest from 1930.

From the record

“Shafter Research Station is an agricultural research station near Shafter, Kern County, California, in the San Joaquin Valley.”
Wikipedia article Shafter Research Station, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 23 National Register listings published here for Kern County · listed in 1997 · category: District.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

Address. 17053 Shafter Ave., Shafter, 93263
When was it listed? October 1997
Category. district
Census division. Shafter
Architectural style. Spanish Colonial Revival architecture
National Register reference number. 97001211 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Fires near this property

58 since 1994

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 58 fires within 5 miles of Shafter Research Station between 1994 and 2020, burning about 623 acres in total. None started naturally. 7 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	40
Arson/incendiarism	7
Equipment and vehicle use	5
Misuse of fire by a minor	3
Smoking	1
Debris and open burning	1
Power generation/transmission/distribution	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
30 September 2018	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	California Department of Forestry & Fire Protection	not named
3 September 2007	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	California Department of Forestry & Fire Protection	not named
21 September 2016	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	California Department of Forestry & Fire Protection	not named
2 September 2005	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	California Department of Forestry & Fire Protection	not named
16 September 2016	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	California Department of Forestry & Fire Protection	not named
10 September 2018	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	California Department of Forestry & Fire Protection	not named
6 August 2006	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	California Department of Forestry & Fire Protection	not named
2 August 2018	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	California Department of Forestry & Fire Protection	not named

Every fire recorded in Kern County

Storms near this property

1 since 2016

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Shafter, the town this property stands in, in 1 storm report in 2016: 1 heavy rain. 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 2016	Heavy Rain	Shafter	-	Reports of nuisance flooding and street ponding were submitted via Facebook of flooding in Shafter California in Kern County at approximately 2020 PST.

Every storm recorded in Kern County

Maps showing this location

10 surveys

United States Geological Survey topographic sheets whose coverage includes this point. Matched by taking the middle of the area the National Park Service maps for this listing, then testing that coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet.

1930 USGS Wasco quadrangle1:31680 - 3 printings
1943 USGS Wasco quadrangle1:62500
1948 USGS Bakersfield quadrangle1:250000 - 2 printings
1953 USGS Wasco quadrangle1:24000 - 3 printings
1955 USGS Bakersfield quadrangle1:250000
1956 USGS Bakersfield quadrangle1:250000
1960 USGS Bakersfield quadrangle1:250000 - 2 printings
1962 USGS Bakersfield quadrangle1:250000 - 4 printings
1966 USGS Bakersfield quadrangle1:250000
1993 USGS Delano quadrangle1:100000 - 2 printings

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.

Property	Distance	Listed
Santa Fe Passenger and Freight Depot	1.8 miles	1982
Green Hotel	2.1 miles	1989
Wasco Union High School Auditorium	5.8 miles	1997

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 97001211 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Kern County	All 23 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.