Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008.
From the record
“Hobson Block is a historic building in West Union, Iowa, United States. The brick and stone building was designed by local architect Edward Easton in the Late Victorian style to rebuild the town after its original wooden structures were destroyed by fire in May 1885.”
Wikipedia article Hobson Block, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 29 National Register listings published here for Fayette County · listed in 2008 · category: Building.
Also known as. Iowa's Main Street Commercial Architecture MPS
City. West Union city
National Register reference number.08001042- 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
23 since 2006
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 23 fires within 5 miles of Hobson Block
between 2006 and 2019, burning about 287 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
11
Debris and open burning
10
Equipment and vehicle use
2
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
10 workings within 5 miles of Hobson Block: 6 past producers, 4 producers.
4 still produce. What was taken out: Stone, Crushed/Broken, Barium-Barite, 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.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
West Union, the town this property stands in, in 33 storm reports between 1997 and 2024: 18 thunderstorm wind, 12 hail, 1 tornado, 1 funnel cloud.
The reports record 1 injury. 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.
A fifth wheel camper was picked up and turned upside down by straight line winds from a severe thunderstorm. The winds also partially removed the metal roof off a large machine shed. Golf ball sized hail also fell that broke the siding on a house.
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.
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.
Block
