Photograph of Dennis Melcher Pottery and House — Photograph by Ian Poellet, CC BY-SA 3.0. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Dennis Melcher Melcher Pottery and House

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.

From the record

“The Dennis Melcher Pottery and House are historic structures located southwest of Danville, Iowa, United States. Dennis Melcher and his brother Edward were both born in Baden, Germany and immigrated to Burlington, Iowa in the 1840s.”
Wikipedia article Dennis Melcher Pottery and House, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 35 National Register listings published here for Des Moines County · listed in 2003 · 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.
Listed as. Melcher, Dennis Melcher, Pottery and House - the National Register files a house under its owner's surname.
Address. 22981 and 22982 Agency Rd., Danville, 52623
When was it listed? August 2003
Category. building
Township. Danville township
Architectural style. Italianate architecture
National Register reference number. 03000832 - 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

12 since 2012

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 12 fires within 5 miles of Dennis Melcher Melcher Pottery and House between 2012 and 2020, burning about 37 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	10
Equipment and vehicle use	1
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	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
27 April 2018	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
21 April 2019	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
1 April 2020	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
1 April 2020	Debris and open burning	2.0 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
7 March 2020	Equipment and vehicle use	5.0 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
7 March 2012	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
3 March 2018	Debris and open burning	2.0 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
19 March 2018	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named

Every fire recorded in Des Moines County

Mines and quarries near this property

5 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 5 workings within 5 miles of Dennis Melcher Melcher Pottery and House: 4 past producers, 1 producer. 1 still produces. What was taken out: Stone, Crushed/Broken, Limestone, Dimension, Stone, Crushed/Broken, Flagstone. 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
Renner Quarry	Flagstone	Past Producer
Schroeder Quarry	Limestone, Dimension, Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
Heinold Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Producer
Unknown	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
Ward Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer

Every working recorded in Des Moines County

Storms near this property

21 since 1993

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Danville, the town this property stands in, in 21 storm reports between 1993 and 2024: 9 thunderstorm wind, 8 hail, 2 funnel cloud, 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
April 1993	Thunderstorm Wind	Danville	$50,000	no account filed
April 1993	Thunderstorm Wind	Danville	$50,000	no account filed
August 2004	Thunderstorm Wind	Danville	$3,000	6-10 inch diameter trees down; power lines down with corn flattened.
May 2022	Flash Flood	Danville	-	Water flowing into homes, apartments, and the school. Water flowing over highway in Danville. 2 feet of standing water on Main Street and several gravel roads washed out west of Danville. There was an unofficial report of 9.0 inches of measured rainfall in Danville. Time estimated based on radar and fire/rescue information.
August 2020	Thunderstorm Wind	Danville	-	Several 6 inch diameter tree branches were blown down, and across power lines.
June 2020	Thunderstorm Wind	Danville	-	A trained spotter reported a tree with several large branches off. along with corn stocks blown down.
June 2020	Thunderstorm Wind	Danville	-	A trained spotter reported that some large tree limbs snapped.
February 2017	Hail	Danville	-	A public report of 1.5 inch diameter hail was received through social media.
June 2015	Thunderstorm Wind	Danville	-	A large, 24 inch diameter limb snapped off a tree at mile marker 252 on Highway 34.
August 2015	Thunderstorm Wind	Danville	-	The Emergency Manager for Des Moines County reported 10 to 12 inch diameter tree branches down.
June 2010	Hail	Danville	-	Quarter sized hail fell in Danville, IA at 1130 pm June 1.
April 2006	Hail	Danville	-	At Harmony Bible Church
April 2006	Hail	Danville	-	Jct U.S. 34 & X27; dime size hail with a lot of pea hail
April 2006	Funnel Cloud	Danville	-	Funnel and wall cloud north of Danville.
April 2006	Heavy Rain	Danville	-	Deputy reported zero visibility at the intersection of U.S. 34 and X27.
October 2002	Thunderstorm Wind	Danville	-	Localized but extensive damage occurred due to a downburst. Damage was first reported in Danville where a large tree was blown onto a vehicle, several windows were blown out of a home, and numerous tree limbs were blown down. In West Burlington, a grain silo was blown into trees bringing down trees and power lines. The path of damage continued into downtown Burlington where numerous power lines and poles were blown down, trees were knocked over onto several vehicles, a grain silo was toppled, and a billboard was blown onto a police vehicle. The last report of damage was near the Southeast Iowa Regional Airport, where construction signs and billboards were blown down.
August 2024	Hail	Danville	-	no account filed
April 2015	Hail	Danville	-	no account filed
June 2005	Funnel Cloud	Danville	-	no account filed
April 1996	Hail	Danville	-	no account filed
April 1996	Hail	Danville	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Des Moines 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

1 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.

Photograph	Property	Distance	Listed
	Prairie Grove School	7.8 miles	2019

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 03000832 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Des Moines County	All 35 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.