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Pacific Junction, Iowa

13 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1954 and the latest in 1993. It stands in Plattville Township. It lies in ZIP code area 51561. The Survey maps it on the Pacific Junction quadrangle. 96 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 955 feet above sea level.

Pacific Junction within Mills County

Population over time

2 figures

Pacific Junction fell from 471 to 96 between 2010 and 2020. These are the recorded population figures Wikidata holds for this place, reached through the Geographic Names Information System number this page is keyed on rather than by name, so they belong to this place and not to another of the same name. Most are census counts, but not all are: an early figure may be a founding or settlement estimate, and an estimate published within five years of a census is left out. The change column is computed, and is left blank where more than 20 years separate a figure from the one before it, because a gap that long is not a change between two counts.

YearPeople Change
2010471
202096-375 (-80%)

Topographic sheets covering this place

6 surveys from 13 printed sheets

Matched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.

Fires near this place

51 since 2008

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 51 fires within 5 miles of Pacific Junction between 2008 and 2020, burning about 698 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
Debris and open burning24
Missing data/not specified/undetermined17
Smoking6
Equipment and vehicle use2
Power generation/transmission/distribution1
Recreation and ceremony1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

DateCause SizeReported by Name on the report
4 September 2017Debris and open burning1.0 acresNebraska Forest Servicenot named
1 September 2013Smokingunder an acreIowa Department of Natural Resourcesnot named
24 August 2012Debris and open burningunder an acreNebraska Forest Servicenot named
22 August 2012Smoking1.0 acresIowa Department of Natural Resourcesnot named
10 August 2016Missing data/not specified/undetermined15 acresIowa Department of Natural ResourcesGLENWOOD FIRE DEPARTMENT
24 July 2013Debris and open burningunder an acreNebraska Forest Servicenot named
14 July 2015Debris and open burningunder an acreNebraska Forest Servicenot named
12 June 2016Missing data/not specified/undetermined1.0 acresIowa Department of Natural ResourcesGLENWOOD FIRE DEPARTMENT

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Mills County

Mines and quarries near this place

1 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 1 working within 5 miles of Pacific Junction: 1 past producer. 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.

Where SiteCommodity StatusRecorded
Pacific Junction PitSand and Gravel, ConstructionPast Producer

Every working recorded in Mills County

Storms near this place

1 since 1994

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Pacific Junction in 1 storm report in 1994: 1 hail. 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.

WhenEvent Place namedHarm What the report says
July 1994HailPacific Junction$5,000A thunderstorm complex drifted over northwest and north central Iowa during the previous night. This complex formed on the cold side of a decaying cold front that was moving southeast across the central U.S. The front became stationary east to west across Iowa, aligned with the outflow boundary from the complex. During the afternoon the airmass became very unstable. Surface based lifted indices reach -12 with convective available potential energy values in the 1000 to 2000 J-Kg-1 range. Thunderstorms erupted along the boundary. Though most of them remained below severe limits, a few did produce severe weather. High winds blew down trees and damaged a truck in Strawberry Point of Clayton County. As the storms moved through Dubuque County, high winds broke at least 2 windows in one home, and tore shingles off the roof of another. The line of storm developed southwest from those in northeast Iowa into the west central counties of the state. From there, the line moved east and south. Little in the way of severe weather was reported following the reports over northeast Iowa, though three quarter inch diameter hail did fall northwest of Guthrie Center, in Guthrie County. Later, one cell dropped hail nearly an inch in diameter in Mills County at Pacific Junction. The main event with these storms was the torrential rainfall. Many areas received 1 to 2 inches of rain in under an hour. Flash flooding became a problem in the Dallas and Madison County area. WSR-88D radar precipitation estimates showed 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 inches of rain in many area of southern Dallas County into Madison County. One spot indication from radar showed rainfall in excess of 3 1/2 inches. Ground truth revealed that 4 inches of rain had fallen in 90 minutes in the town of Earlham, in Madison County. Most of the rain that fell did so in less than 2 hours. There were several reports of water overtopping roads from Madison County and the southern part of Dallas County. The storms progressed east into Polk and Warren Counties. Heavy rainfall occurred, but only briefly. Reports of 1 to 1 1/2 inches of rain in under an hour were received. This did cause some minor street flooding in the Des Moines metropolitan area, but no other significant flooding was reported.

Every storm recorded in Mills County

Nearest settlements

The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.

Map PlaceDistance Sheets
Mills1.8 miles13
Pacific City2.0 miles13
Glenwood3.6 miles12
Folsom5.0 miles13
Hentons (historical)5.4 miles13
Burr Oak5.7 miles15
Hillsdale6.8 miles12
Balfour7.3 miles12

Elsewhere

Matched on this settlement's Geographic Names Information System number rather than its name, so it cannot be a different place of the same name in another state.

Wikipedia article on Pacific JunctionAn encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q1887093The structured record the population and elevation above come from. Public domain (CC0).

Provenance

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 459983. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.

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.