Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016.
From the record
“Jones Building, also known as the Electric Farm Lighting Co. and the Laster Motor Company, is a historic building located in Des Moines, Iowa, United States. It is significant for its association with the rise of the automobile industry in the city.”
Wikipedia article G.W. Jones Building, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 208 National Register listings published here for Polk County · listed in 2016 · category: Building.
National Register reference number. 16000364 - assigned by the National Park Service when the property was listed.
Fires near this property
7 since 2006
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 7 fires within 5 miles of G.W. Jones Building
between 2006 and 2009, burning about 35 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
7
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
11 workings within 5 miles of G.W. Jones Building: 7 past producers, 4 producers.
4 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Stone, Crushed/Broken, Clay, Flagstone. 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
Des Moines, the town this property stands in, in 348 storm reports between 1994 and 2025: 131 hail, 101 thunderstorm wind, 52 flood, 30 flash flood.
The reports record 2 deaths and 48 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.
Thunderstorm winds blew down a large tree branch. A homeless individual died when a the branch fell on him at a homeless settlement along the banks of the Raccoon River east of Fluer Blvd.
Tornado touched down on southwest edge of West Des Moines at the Glen Oaks Golf Club and swept into an apartment complex. Track was intermittent following the destruction of a garage unit there.
At 201 Grand Avenue, three condos suffered major damage and a fourth had minor damage from a fire believed to have been started by lightning according to firefighters. Time estimated using lightning data.
A tornado took down power lines and power poles were snapped at 13th Street and Mulberry. The public reported a flipped car at SW 6th Street and Mulberry.
The Raccoon River at Des Moines at Fleur Drive crested twice, the first crest at 15.13 ft on 11 October 2018 at 02:30 UTC, the second crest at 15.06 ft on 13 October 2018 at 09:45 UTC.
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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