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.
Population over time
2 figuresPacific 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.
| Year | People | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 471 | |
| 2020 | 96 | -375 (-80%) |
Topographic sheets covering this place
6 surveys from 13 printed sheetsMatched 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.
- 1954 USGS Omaha quadrangle1:250000, 3 printings
- 1956 USGS Pacific Junction quadrangle1:24000, 4 printings
- 1957 USGS Omaha quadrangle1:250000
- 1958 USGS Omaha quadrangle1:250000, 2 printings
- 1985 USGS Omaha quadrangle1:100000, 2 printings
- 1993 USGS Pacific Junction quadrangle1:24000
Fires near this place
51 since 2008Regional 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 burning | 24 |
| Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 17 |
| Smoking | 6 |
| Equipment and vehicle use | 2 |
| Power generation/transmission/distribution | 1 |
| Recreation and ceremony | 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 September 2017 | Debris and open burning | 1.0 acres | Nebraska Forest Service | not named |
| 1 September 2013 | Smoking | under an acre | Iowa Department of Natural Resources | not named |
| 24 August 2012 | Debris and open burning | under an acre | Nebraska Forest Service | not named |
| 22 August 2012 | Smoking | 1.0 acres | Iowa Department of Natural Resources | not named |
| 10 August 2016 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 15 acres | Iowa Department of Natural Resources | GLENWOOD FIRE DEPARTMENT |
| 24 July 2013 | Debris and open burning | under an acre | Nebraska Forest Service | not named |
| 14 July 2015 | Debris and open burning | under an acre | Nebraska Forest Service | not named |
| 12 June 2016 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 1.0 acres | Iowa Department of Natural Resources | GLENWOOD FIRE DEPARTMENT |
Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:
Mines and quarries near this place
1 within 5 milesRegional 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 | Site | Commodity | Status | Recorded |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pacific Junction Pit | Sand and Gravel, Construction | Past Producer |
Storms near this place
1 since 1994Regional 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.
| When | Event | Place named | Harm | What the report says |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| July 1994 | Hail | Pacific Junction | $5,000 | A 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. |
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 | Place | Distance | Sheets |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mills | 1.8 miles | 13 | |
| Pacific City | 2.0 miles | 13 | |
| Glenwood | 3.6 miles | 12 | |
| Folsom | 5.0 miles | 13 | |
| Hentons (historical) | 5.4 miles | 13 | |
| Burr Oak | 5.7 miles | 15 | |
| Hillsdale | 6.8 miles | 12 | |
| Balfour | 7.3 miles | 12 |
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 Junction | An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied. |
| Wikidata item Q1887093 | The 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.





