Secrest Octagon Barn

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

From the record

“The Secrest Octagon Barn is a historic building located near Downey in rural Johnson County, Iowa, United States. It was constructed in 1883 by master builder George Frank Longerbean for Joshua Hunt Secrest as a hay barn-horse stable.”
Wikipedia article Secrest Octagon Barn, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 96 National Register listings published here for Johnson County · listed in 1974 · category: Building.

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

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 building as contributing to the listing.
Address. W of Downey, Downey, 52776
When was it listed? November 1974
Category. building
Also known as. Iowa Round Barns: The Sixty Year Experiment TR (AD); Iowa Round Barns: The Sixty Year Experiment TR
Township. Scott township
National Register reference number. 74000790 - 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

27 since 2006

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 27 fires within 5 miles of Secrest Octagon Barn between 2006 and 2017, burning about 490 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
Debris and open burning	13
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	11
Equipment and vehicle use	3

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 2006	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
22 July 2012	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
6 June 2012	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
26 June 2012	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
10 June 2012	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
7 April 2013	Debris and open burning	1.5 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
5 April 2014	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
5 April 2013	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	4.0 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named

Every fire recorded in Johnson 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

1 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.

Photograph	Property	Distance	Listed
	Polygonal Barn, Lincoln Township	2.2 miles	1986

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 74000790 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Johnson County	All 96 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.