Blue Jay Inn

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

From the record

“The Blue Jay Inn, located in Buffalo Creek, Colorado is a late 1880s building that has served as a boarding house, a girls retreat, and as an inn and a restaurant. On October 1, 1974, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.”
Wikipedia article Blue Jay Inn, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 83 National Register listings published here for Jefferson County · listed in 1974 · category: Building.

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

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 3 buildingss as contributing to the listing.
Address. Hwy. 126, Buffalo Creek, 80425
When was it listed? October 1974
Category. building
Census division. South Jefferson
National Register reference number. 74000580 - 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

255 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 255 fires within 5 miles of Blue Jay Inn between 1992 and 2020, burning about 16,734 acres in total. 124 started naturally. 4 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
Natural	124
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	90
Recreation and ceremony	28
Arson/incendiarism	4
Debris and open burning	3
Equipment and vehicle use	3
Smoking	2
Firearms and explosives 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
8 September 2013	Natural	under an acre	North Fork Fire Protection District	UNKNOWN
7 September 2018	Natural	under an acre	Pike and San Isabel National Forest	SANDY
5 September 2018	Natural	under an acre	Pike and San Isabel National Forest	538
5 September 2016	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	North Fork Fire Protection District	UNKNOWN
4 September 2019	Natural	under an acre	Pike and San Isabel National Forest	LONG SCRAGGY
4 September 1994	Natural	2.0 acres	Pike and San Isabel National Forest	not named
3 September 2020	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	North Fork Fire Protection District	N/A
3 September 2012	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Pike and San Isabel National Forest	SHOOTER 2

Every fire recorded in Jefferson County

Mines and quarries near this property

10 of 62 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 62 workings within 5 miles of Blue Jay Inn: 24 producers, 20 past producers, 10 occurrences, 8 unknowns. 24 still produce. What was taken out: Feldspar, Quartz, Fluorine-Fluorite, Feldspar, Quartz. 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	Recorded
Alpha	Gold	Past Producer
Big Bear No. 2 Mine	Feldspar, REE	Past Producer	Microcline
Big Bertha Mine	Quartz, Feldspar, Thorium, REE	Past Producer	1947, 1953
Buffalo Mine	Lead, Gold, Silver, Fluorine-Fluorite	Past Producer	1895, 1898
Butte #1	Feldspar, Quartz, Fluorine-Fluorite	Producer	Fluorite, Quartz
Catherine #1 Claim	Mica, Fluorine-Fluorite, Gemstone, Feldspar, Quartz	Occurrence	Fluorite, Mica, Quartz, Topaz
Cooper Quarry	Quartz, Feldspar, Uranium, Thorium, REE	Past Producer	1968
Dazie Bell Mine	Quartz, Fluorine-Fluorite, REE, Manganese	Past Producer	1965
Delbert Claims #1 & 2	Feldspar, Quartz, Mica, Fluorine-Fluorite	Producer	Feldspar, Fluorite, Mica, Quartz
Judy Ann Mine	Quartz, Mica, Feldspar, Fluorine-Fluorite, REE	Occurrence	Fluorite, Gadolinite, Muscovite, Quartz

Every working recorded in Jefferson County

Storms near this property

10 since 1996

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Buffalo Creek, the town this property stands in, in 10 storm reports between 1996 and 2023: 5 hail, 4 flash flood, 1 lightning. The reports record 2 deaths. 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
July 1996	Flash Flood	Buffalo Creek	2 killed, $520,000	no account filed
July 2023	Flash Flood	Buffalo Creek	$10,000	Heavy rain produced multiple mudslides on and near Highway 126. The roadway was closed until the debris could be cleared.
July 1998	Flash Flood	Buffalo Creek	-	Heavy rain, up to 3 inches in an hour, caused a flash flood along Buffalo Creek, Portions of County Road 126, just south of the town of Buffalo Creek, were washed out. The floodwaters near washed away the bridge as mud and debris slammed into the structure. It was almost 2 years to the day that a deadly flash flood rushed through the small town killing 2 residents.
August 2023	Hail	Buffalo Creek	-	no account filed
July 2018	Hail	Buffalo Creek	-	no account filed
May 2016	Hail	Buffalo Creek	-	no account filed
July 2011	Hail	Buffalo Creek	-	no account filed
August 2007	Hail	Buffalo Creek	-	no account filed
July 1996	Lightning	Buffalo Creek	-	no account filed
September 1996	Flash Flood	Buffalo Creek	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Jefferson 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

5 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
La Hacienda	0.4 miles	1973
Green Mercantile Store	0.4 miles	1974
North Fork Historic District	2.0 miles	1974
North Fork Historic District (Boundary Increase)	3.4 miles	2008
Green Mountain Ranch	6.4 miles	1974

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 74000580 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Jefferson County	All 83 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.