Medano Ranch Headquarters

Built in 1877. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.

From the record

One of 16 National Register listings published here for Alamosa County · listed in 2004 · category: District · built in 1877.

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

The listing

Address. 2.6 mi. N of 6N Ln., Mosca, 81146
When was it listed? February 2004
Category. district
Census division. Mosca-Hooper
When was it built? 1877
National Register reference number. 03001543 - 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

7 since 2007

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 7 fires within 5 miles of Medano Ranch Headquarters between 2007 and 2010, burning about 318 acres in total. 2 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
Natural	2
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1
Smoking	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
3 August 2010	Natural	under an acre	Colorado State Forest Service-State Headquarters	not named
13 July 2010	Smoking	under an acre	Colorado State Forest Service-State Headquarters	not named
6 June 2007	Power generation/transmission/distribution	307 acres	Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve	MEDANO RANCH
21 June 2010	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Colorado State Forest Service-State Headquarters	not named
14 May 2010	Natural	under an acre	Colorado State Forest Service-State Headquarters	not named
9 April 2010	Arson/incendiarism	10 acres	Colorado State Forest Service-State Headquarters	not named
19 April 2010	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	Colorado State Forest Service-State Headquarters	not named

Every fire recorded in Alamosa County

Mines and quarries near this property

1 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 1 working within 5 miles of Medano Ranch Headquarters: 1 producer. All of them still produce. What was taken out: Sodium. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Where	Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
	Unknown	Sodium	Producer	Trona

Every working recorded in Alamosa County

Storms near this property

7 since 1997

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Mosca, the town this property stands in, in 7 storm reports between 1997 and 2014: 4 tornado, 2 hail, 1 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
August 2008	Tornado (EF1)	Mosca	$8,000	A brief tornado destroyed a mobile home in a rural area.
May 2014	Tornado (EF0)	Mosca	-	A short-lived tornado occurred south of the Great Sand Dunes National Park.
May 2013	Tornado (EF0)	Mosca	-	A landspout occurred over a field.
August 1997	Tornado (F0)	Mosca	-	A series of funnel clouds with a weak thundershower moved across northern Alamosa county near Mosca. The funnel clouds touched down briefly at least twice, causing no known damage.
August 2008	Hail	Mosca	-	no account filed
August 2008	Hail	Mosca	-	no account filed
October 2007	Thunderstorm Wind	Mosca	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Alamosa 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
	Trujillo Homestead	3.2 miles	2004
	Zapata Ranch Headquarters	6.5 miles	1993

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 03001543 in Record Group 79.
Alamosa County	All 16 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.