Handy Chapel

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994.

From the record

“Handy Chapel is the only original church building still standing in the original square mile of Grand Junction, Colorado. The land that the chapel was built on was deeded to "the black citizens of Grand Junction" for the express purpose of building a place of worship in 1883, just two short years after Grand Junction was originally staked out by town founder and Governor George A.”
Wikipedia article Handy Chapel, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 33 National Register listings published here for Mesa County · listed in 1994 · 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 2 buildingss as contributing to the listing.
Address. 202 White Ave., Grand Junction, 81501
When was it listed? August 1994
Category. building
Census division. Grand Junction
National Register reference number. 94001012 - 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

1,046 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 1,046 fires within 5 miles of Handy Chapel between 1992 and 2020, burning about 13,322 acres in total. 23 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
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	902
Smoking	41
Equipment and vehicle use	25
Natural	23
Fireworks	21
Debris and open burning	15
Recreation and ceremony	11
Arson/incendiarism	4
Railroad operations and maintenance	2
Other causes	1
Misuse of fire by a minor	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
9 September 2015	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Grand Junction Fire Department	UNKNOWN
9 September 2014	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Grand Junction Fire Department	UNKNOWN
9 September 2013	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Grand Junction Fire Department	UNKNOWN
9 September 2011	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Colorado State Forest Service-State Headquarters	GRAND JUNCTION
8 September 2018	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Grand Junction Fire Department	UNKNOWN
8 September 2014	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Grand Junction Fire Department	UNKNOWN
7 September 2019	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Colorado State Forest Service-State Headquarters	N/A
7 September 2017	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Grand Junction Fire Department	UNKNOWN

Every fire recorded in Mesa County

Mines and quarries near this property

10 of 60 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 60 workings within 5 miles of Handy Chapel: 38 unknowns, 12 occurrences, 7 producers, 2 past producers. 7 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Clay, Gypsum-Anhydrite, Uranium. 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
Colo Copper Properties	Copper	Producer
Lucius Pitkin Inc	Uranium, Vanadium	Past Producer
Unknown	Stone, Dimension	Occurrence	Metamorphic
Unnamed	Stone	Unknown
Fireside Enterprises	Limestone, Dimension	Occurrence
Himes Drilling	Limestone, Dimension	Unknown
Unknown	Barium-Barite	Occurrence	Hydrothermal Vein
Unnamed Mine	Barium-Barite	Unknown
Unknown	Fire Clay (Refractory)	Occurrence
Unknown	Fire Clay (Refractory)	Occurrence

Every working recorded in Mesa County

Storms near this property

2 since 1993

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Grand Junction, the town this property stands in, in 2 storm reports between 1993 and 1996: 1 thunderstorm wind, 1 lightning. 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
September 1996	Lightning	Grand Junction	$4,000	no account filed
September 1993	Thunderstorm Wind	Grand Junction	-	Thunderstorm winds gusted to 60 mph (52 knots) at the Grand Junction airport.

Every storm recorded in Mesa 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
U.S. Post Office	0.2 miles	1980
Hotel St. Regis	0.3 miles	1992
Margery Building	0.3 miles	1993
Stranges Grocery	0.3 miles	2013
Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad Depot	0.4 miles	1992
North Seventh Street Historic Residential District	0.5 miles	1984

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 94001012 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Mesa County	All 33 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.