Photograph by ← Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots →, Public domain. Via
Wikimedia Commons.
Surf Ballroom
A National Historic Landmark. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2011.
From the record
“The Surf Ballroom is a Historic Rock and Roll Landmark at 460 North Shore Drive, Clear Lake, Iowa, United States. The Surf is closely associated with the event known colloquially as "The Day the Music Died" - early rock and roll stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.”
Wikipedia article Surf Ballroom, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 48 National Register listings published here for Cerro Gordo County · listed in 2011 · category: Building · a National Historic Landmark.
National Register reference number.10000261- 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
2 since 2011
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 2 fires within 5 miles of Surf Ballroom
between 2011 and 2020, burning about 2 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
1
Debris and open burning
1
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
9 workings within 5 miles of Surf Ballroom: 5 producers, 3 past producers, 1 unknown.
5 still produce. 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.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Clear Lake, the town this property stands in, in 74 storm reports between 1994 and 2025: 34 hail, 19 thunderstorm wind, 13 heavy rain, 3 lightning.
The reports record 5 injuries. 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 family reported seeing a red and orange fireball before realizing their neighbor's home was on fire. A tall tree behind the home appeared to have been struck on fire as well.
Local 911 call center reported a boat struck by lightning on the shore of Clear Lake. Fire also reported, but magnitude unknown. Other reports of a house struck by lightning in the area as well. Time estimated.
The fire is was caused by a lightning strike to the home that energized a telephone line and spread to roofing materials and insulation. Smoke was initially reported in the attic and flames on the roof line.
Report of a tornado west of Burchinal with a supercell in Cerro Gordo county. Tornado path confirmed using high resolution satellite imagery. Damage was mostly to crops although some minor tree damage occurred at a couple of farmsteads.
Broadcast media shared drone imagery of a track developing just east of the I-35 and Highway 18 interchange. The tornado primarily tracked through cropland, but did result in tree damage early in the track for an EF0 rating.
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
5 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.
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