Monte Vista Downtown Historic District

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.

From the record

“The Monte Vista Downtown Historic District, in Monte Vista, Colorado, is a historic district which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. It included nine contributing buildings and some non-contributing ones.”
Wikipedia article Monte Vista Downtown Historic District, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 13 National Register listings published here for Rio Grande County · listed in 1991 · category: District.

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 9 buildingss as contributing to the listing.
Address. Jct. of First Ave. and Washington St., Monte Vista, 81144
When was it listed? November 1991
Category. district
Census division. Monte Vista
National Register reference number. 91001612 - 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

21 since 2003

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 21 fires within 5 miles of Monte Vista Downtown Historic District between 2003 and 2016, burning about 22 acres in total. None 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
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	21

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
24 June 2005	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	CSFS-Alamosa District	not named
23 May 2005	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	CSFS-Alamosa District	not named
14 May 2005	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	CSFS-Alamosa District	not named
6 April 2005	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	CSFS-Alamosa District	not named
3 April 2005	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	20 acres	CSFS-Alamosa District	not named
27 April 2005	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	CSFS-Alamosa District	not named
24 April 2005	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	CSFS-Alamosa District	not named
23 April 2005	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	CSFS-Alamosa District	not named

Every fire recorded in Rio Grande County

Mines and quarries near this property

10 of 13 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 13 workings within 5 miles of Monte Vista Downtown Historic District: 8 unknowns, 5 occurrences. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. 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
Mathias North Pit & Plant	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Unknown
Unk	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Unknown
Unk	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Unknown
Unk	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Unknown
Unk	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Unknown
Unk	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Unknown
Unk	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Unknown
Unk Pits	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Unknown
Unknown	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Occurrence	Gravel
Unknown	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Occurrence	Gravel

Every working recorded in Rio Grande County

Storms near this property

6 since 1995

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Monte Vista, the town this property stands in, in 6 storm reports between 1995 and 2024: 4 hail, 1 tornado, 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
June 1995	Tornado (F0)	Monte Vista	$3,000	Tornado moved haying machine and knocked over a towed camper on Highway 15.
August 2024	Hail	Monte Vista	-	A trained spotter reported hail of 0.88 inches in diameter.
August 2024	Hail	Monte Vista	-	A public report via CoCoRaHS reported hail of 0.75 inches in diameter.
August 2024	Heavy Rain	Monte Vista	-	A COOP Observer reported 0.87 inches of rain, which fell in a short period of time and was produced by a strong thunderstorm.
May 2008	Hail	Monte Vista	-	no account filed
June 1999	Hail	Monte Vista	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Rio Grande 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
El Monte Hotel	0.1 miles	1990
First Methodist Episcopal Church	0.1 miles	2003
Central School Auditorium and Gymnasium	0.2 miles	1996
Monte Vista Library	0.2 miles	1995
Carnegie Library	0.2 miles	1995
US Post Office and Federal Building-Monte Vista Main	0.2 miles	1986

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 91001612 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Rio Grande County	All 13 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.