Built in 1904 (American Foursquare). Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2019.
From the record
“The Olmsted Family Farmhouse, also known as the Olmsted-Urban House, is an historic building located in Urbandale, Iowa, United States. Leander and Charlotte Olmsted from Auburn, New York acquired 80 acres (32 ha) of land in Polk County, Iowa in 1867.”
Wikipedia article Olmsted Family Farmhouse, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 208 National Register listings published here for Polk County · listed in 2019 · category: Building · built in 1904, American Foursquare.
National Register reference number. 100004230 - assigned by the National Park Service when the property was listed.
Fires near this property
15 since 2006
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 15 fires within 5 miles of Farmhouse, Olmsted Family
between 2006 and 2019, burning about 68 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
Equipment and vehicle use
4
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 Farmhouse, Olmsted Family: 5 past producers, 5 producers.
5 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Stone, Crushed/Broken, Clay, Zinc. 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
Urbandale, the town this property stands in, in 107 storm reports between 1994 and 2025: 43 thunderstorm wind, 32 hail, 19 heavy rain, 8 flash flood.
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.
A home was flooded by Rocklyn Creek which caused a divider wall in the duplex to fail and collapse. Two residents were stuck in side and swam to safety through a downstairs window. The remaining residents were evacuated. Soon after the home exploded due to a gas leak when the wall collapsed. The explosion damaged a few nearby homes as well.
Public reported heavy rainfall of 2.68 inches measured at 8:47 pm. Multiple cars were also stalled on Meredith Ave with an estimated 8 inches of water rush down 67th St to Meredith.
Emergency manager stated dozens of reports of power lines down, trees down, power outages from transformer damage, and motor vehicle crashes all suspected to be storm related. Metro wide reports too numerous to report.
Standing water 6 inches deep just south of Douglas and Merle Hay, couple inches of flowing water at 63rd and Hickman, 1-2 feet of standing water at Washington and 68th.
Several vehicles stalled at the intersection of Northwest Urbandale Drive and Meredith Drive, also at Douglas Ave and Aurora Ave by 1 to 1.5 feet of water flowing through the intersections.
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.
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