Photograph of Amana Colonies — Photograph by Kepper66 at en.wikipedia, Public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Upper South Hotel

A National Historic Landmark. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.

From the record

“The Amana Colonies are seven villages on 26,000 acres (110 km2) located in Iowa County in east-central Iowa, United States: Amana, East Amana, High Amana, Middle Amana, South Amana, West Amana, and Homestead. The villages were built and settled by German Radical Pietists, who were persecuted in their homeland by the German state government and the Lutheran Church.”
Wikipedia article Amana Colonies, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 10 National Register listings published here for Iowa County · listed in 1966 · category: Building · a National Historic Landmark.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

National Historic Landmark. The highest federal designation, held by about 2,600 places in the country against roughly 100,000 Register listings.
Still standing. The Park Service records this property as extant.
Address. NE Iowa County, Middle Amana, 52334
When was it listed? October 1966
Category. building
Township. Hilton township
National Register reference number. 66000336 - 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

20 since 2007

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 20 fires within 5 miles of Upper South Hotel between 2007 and 2020, burning about 81 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	10
Debris and open burning	9
Railroad operations and maintenance	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
5 July 2017	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
4 July 2017	Debris and open burning	3.0 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
24 May 2014	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
26 April 2018	Railroad operations and maintenance	2.0 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
22 April 2018	Debris and open burning	3.0 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
19 April 2014	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	5.0 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
10 April 2014	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
10 April 2009	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	6.5 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named

Every fire recorded in Iowa County

Mines and quarries near this property

2 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 2 workings within 5 miles of Upper South Hotel: 2 past producers. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Flagstone, Limestone, General. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Where	Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
	Amana Sandstone Quarries	Flagstone	Past Producer
	Meekins Quarry	Limestone, General	Past Producer

Every working recorded in Iowa County

Storms near this property

6 since 2004

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Middle Amana, the town this property stands in, in 6 storm reports between 2004 and 2023: 4 hail, 1 flash flood, 1 thunderstorm wind. 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
August 2004	Flash Flood	Middle Amana	$40,000	Between 2145 CST and 2245 CST, spotters reported that 4.5 to 5.5 inches of rain fell in the Amana's Colonies in Northeast Iowa County. A road was closed due to high water in Middle Amana and a nursing home was flooded with water up to 6 inches deep, including the kitchen and welcome areas. A small recreational dam on a pond between Middle Amana and High Amana broke flooding the immediate area.
May 2023	Thunderstorm Wind	Middle Amana	-	Estimated 65 mph wind gust with thunderstorm.
October 2013	Hail	Middle Amana	-	Golf ball sized hail fell about 2 miles west of Amana, IA at 851 am CDT October 4th.
April 2011	Hail	Middle Amana	-	Golf ball sized hail fell 2 miles west of Amana, IA at 632 pm CDT April 3.
June 2008	Hail	Middle Amana	-	Law enforcement reported hail about the size of golf balls at Middle Amana.
May 2023	Hail	Middle Amana	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Iowa 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

4 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.

Property	Distance	Listed
Plagmann Round Barn	5.2 miles	1986
Iowa County Courthouse	5.7 miles	1981
Lenox Township Church of the New Jersalem	6.0 miles	1983
David and M. Maria Hughes House	7.6 miles	1996

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 66000336 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Iowa County	All 10 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.