Photograph by National Park Service, Public domain. Via
Wikimedia Commons.
Rial Chew Ranch Complex
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.
From the record
“The Rial Chew Ranch Historic District comprises a ranching operation in what is now Dinosaur National Monument in northwestern Colorado, that existed from 1900 to 1949. The Rial Chew family established the ranch in 1900, operating it as a park inholding after the national monument was established in 1919.”
Wikipedia article Rial Chew Ranch Complex, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 13 National Register listings published here for Moffat County · listed in 1987 · category: District.
National Register reference number.86003392- 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
133 since 1992
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 133 fires within 5 miles of Rial Chew Ranch Complex
between 1992 and 2020, burning about 1,411 acres in total. 130 started naturally. None was 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
130
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
3
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 National Weather Service names
Dinosaur, the town this property stands in, in 13 storm reports between 1998 and 2011: 5 wildfire, 2 tornado, 2 hail, 2 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.
A tornado was observed by many people in the Rangely area and also photographed by a couple of individuals. The tornado remained over open country during its lifespan. The tornado track location is an estimate based on triangulation of eyewitness reports.
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.
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.
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