Ward School

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.

From the record

“The Ward School, at 66 Columbia St. in Ward, Colorado, is a historic school building later used as the town hall, public library, and post office of Ward Township, and also has been known as Ward Townhall and Post Office. It was built in 1898 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as "Ward School" in 1989.”
Wikipedia article Ward School (Ward, Colorado), CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 92 National Register listings published here for Boulder County · listed in 1989 · category: Building.

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

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 building as contributing to the listing.
Address. 66 Columbia, Ward, 80481
When was it listed? August 1989
Category. building
Also known as. Rural School Buildings in Colorado MPS
Census division. Bald Mountain
National Register reference number. 89000980 - 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

124 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 124 fires within 5 miles of Ward School between 1992 and 2020, burning about 519 acres in total. 31 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
Recreation and ceremony	54
Natural	31
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	25
Equipment and vehicle use	5
Arson/incendiarism	2
Debris and open burning	2
Power generation/transmission/distribution	2
Smoking	2
Fireworks	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 2018	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests and Pawnee National Grassland	IA 657
8 September 2010	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests and Pawnee National Grassland	BEAVER
7 September 1998	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests and Pawnee National Grassland	LEFT HAND RESERVOIR
7 September 1993	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Colorado State Forest Service-Boulder District	not named
5 September 2020	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Lefthand Fire Protection District	N/A
5 September 2010	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests and Pawnee National Grassland	MT. ALTO
4 September 2015	Natural	under an acre	Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests and Pawnee National Grassland	BRAINARD ROAD
3 September 2006	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests and Pawnee National Grassland	LEFTHAND RESERVOIR

Every fire recorded in Boulder County

Mines and quarries near this property

10 of 137 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 137 workings within 5 miles of Ward School: 62 occurrences, 55 past producers, 11 producers, 5 prospects. 11 still produce. What was taken out: Gold, Silver, Uranium, Tungsten. 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
Brainard Lake Plant	Copper, Lead, Zinc	Past Producer
Copper Glance	Gold, Copper	Producer	Vein
Copper Glance	Gold, Talc-Soapstone	Unknown
Copper King Mine	Cobalt, Copper, Nickel	Past Producer	1880, 1940
Copper King Nickel Mine	Cobalt, Nickel, Copper	Past Producer	Chalcopyrite, Niccolite, Pentlandite, Pyrrhotite
Daisy	Gold, Tungsten	Occurrence	Gold
Eldorado Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Unknown
Fools Paradise Number 1 and 2	Gold, Lead, Silver, Zinc, Copper	Past Producer
Golden Chest	Gold, Copper, Lead, Silver, Zinc	Past Producer
Last Chance	Gold, Mercury	Occurrence	Gold, Mercury

Every working recorded in Boulder County

Storms near this property

6 since 1997

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Ward, the town this property stands in, in 6 storm reports between 1997 and 2014: 3 flash flood, 2 hail, 1 lightning. The reports record 1 injury. 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
June 1997	Lightning	Ward	1 hurt	Lightning injured a man while talking on the telephone. The bolt passed through the phone line burning his ear. He received minor injuries.
July 2012	Flash Flood	Ward	$15,000	Heavy rain produced flash flooding in the Fourmile burn area.
July 2012	Flash Flood	Ward	$5,000	Heavy rain produced flash flooding in the Fourmile burn area.
September 2013	Flash Flood	Ward	-	Continuous heavy rainfall produced widespread flash flooding. The CO36 Turnpike was also submerged by 3 feet of water at Foothills Parkway.
May 2014	Hail	Ward	-	no account filed
June 2013	Hail	Ward	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Boulder 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

6 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
Ward Congregational Church	under 500 feet	1989
Modoc Mill	0.6 miles	1978
Denver, Boulder and Western Railway Historic District	4.3 miles	1980
Gold Hill Historic District	5.4 miles	1989
Snowbound Mine	6.6 miles
Wall Street Assay Office	6.7 miles	1989

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 89000980 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Boulder County	All 92 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.