Jackson County Jail

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

From the record

“The former Jackson County Jail, also known as the Andrew Jail, is a historic building located in Andrew, Iowa, United States. Built in 1871 by local contractors Strasser and Schlecht, this building is the only reminder that Andrew was at one time the county seat for Jackson County.”
Wikipedia article Jackson County Jail (Andrew, Iowa), CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 77 National Register listings published here for Jackson County · listed in 1978 · category: Building.

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

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 building as contributing to the listing.
Address. Emmet St., Andrew, 52030
When was it listed? December 1978
Category. building
Township. Perry township
Architectural style. vernacular architecture
National Register reference number. 78001224 - 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

7 since 2006

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 7 fires within 5 miles of Jackson County Jail between 2006 and 2013, burning about 153 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	5
Debris and open burning	2

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
11 August 2012	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	2.0 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
11 July 2012	Debris and open burning	6.0 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
17 May 2013	Debris and open burning	80 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
25 March 2010	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	32997 150TH STREET, IOWA
21 March 2009	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	60 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
15 March 2009	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
14 February 2006	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	3.0 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named

Every fire recorded in Jackson County

Mines and quarries near this property

1 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 1 working within 5 miles of Jackson County Jail: 1 past producer. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Stone, Crushed/Broken. 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
	Andrew Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer

Every working recorded in Jackson County

Storms near this property

14 since 1995

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Andrew, the town this property stands in, in 14 storm reports between 1995 and 2023: 8 thunderstorm wind, 2 hail, 2 tornado, 1 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.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
July 2016	Tornado (EF1)	Andrew	$5,000,000	A NWS storm survey team reported an EF-1 tornado crossed the southern parts of the town of Andrew. A building at the local coop was destroyed and numerous trees were snapped.
July 2016	Thunderstorm Wind	Andrew	$5,000,000	Local law enforcement reported significant damage to a building with nearby trees twisted and some farm equipment knocked over.
July 2003	Thunderstorm Wind	Andrew	$60,000	Limbs & power lines down
July 1995	Thunderstorm Wind	Andrew	$50,000	no account filed
July 1995	Thunderstorm Wind	Andrew	$40,000	Moisture streamed north over the central United States during the 24 hours prior to this event. Surface dew point temperatures were in the 65°-70° F. range. A strong southerly low level jet had also become established during the day with speeds at the 850 mb level in the 50 kt range. On the surface, two fronts were approaching Iowa. One was a warm front to the south of the state. A cold front was moving in from the west. An upper level low pressure area was over north central Kansas during the early afternoon hours. The air mass was quite unstable with lifted indices in the -5° to -7° C. range. The air was even more unstable to the south of Iowa. Convective available potential energy (CAPE) values were around 2800 J-kg-1 with helicity values around 400 m2-s-2 by mid afternoon. Surface mesoscale analysis during the afternoon revealed strong moisture convergence into northwest Missouri and southwest Iowa. That is where the thunderstorms formed. During the mid to late afternoon, a line of thunderstorms formed rapidly from southwest into central Iowa. These storms produced a few funnel clouds, but there was not real threat of them touching down. During the early stages of development, lightning from one of the storms struck a house in Atlantic. No fire was started, however electrical damage was reported. The freezing level on this day was quite high, in excess of 13,500 feet MSL. As a result, hail was not a dominant feature with the storms. Spotty reports of hail between three-quarters on an inch and nearly an inch in diameter were received, but most of the hail was marble-size or smaller. Wind became the major problem with the storms. Within two hours of the initial onset of convection, the thunderstorm complex assumed a bow echo configuration. This bow echo tracked across the entire state producing high winds and brief torrential rains. In Taylor County of southwest Iowa. high winds in the Sharpsburg area downed trees onto a house. The trees crashed through the house and even resulted in some foundation damage. Damage to the house was estimated between $50 thousand and $60 thousand. Near Bedford, high winds downed a tree onto a house. One man was seriously injured as he was unable to get to shelter before the tree fell through the house. He was still in the hospital the following day. Damage to the house was between $8 thousand and $9 thousand. Other damage around the state was mainly tree and power line damage. There were spotty reports of roof damage, such as in the Prairie City area of Jasper County and the Brooklyn area of Poweshiek County. A tractor-semitrailer was overturned by the high winds on Interstate 80 near Newton. For the most part winds were around 60 mph with many of the storms. A few of the storms produced brief stronger gusts in what appeared to be microburst activity. Considerable damage was done in the What Cheer area in Keokuk County. There was some increase in the wind strength over the eastern counties of the state as the storm system began to die out. Winds from the decaying storms reached 60 to 70 mph in several areas of east central Iowa. One of the collapsing storms produced high winds west of Andrew in Jackson County. The winds picked up a 2 x 4 and threw it through the side of a pick-up truck. Flooding was not a large problem except during the early stages of the storm systems development. Heavy rainfall was reported in Taylor County. Two inches fell in 55 minutes time in New Market, while .90 inches fell in 15 minutes in Bedford. The rainfall only resulted in bank full stages on the smaller streams. Minor flooding, mostly in urban areas, was reported in Union County as the heavy rainfall moved through. It did not last long, nor did it cause much damage.
July 2023	Thunderstorm Wind	Andrew	-	Trees down along Highway 62, near Andrew.
May 2020	Tornado (EFU)	Andrew	-	A trained spotter observed a brief tornado in a field. There was no observable damage to assign an EF-scale rating.
October 2018	Flood	Andrew	-	Major flooding occurred on the Maquoketa River between the evening of October 10th and the morning of the 11th when the gage exceeded 28.5 feet. The Maquoketa River crested at 28.9 feet at 12 AM, October 11th.
June 2016	Flash Flood	Andrew	-	Jackson county law enforcement reported several creeks in eastern Jackson county out of their banks.
June 2014	Thunderstorm Wind	Andrew	-	A trained spotter reported a shed blown over and tree branches down.
June 1997	Thunderstorm Wind	Andrew	-	Numerous trees downed.
April 2007	Hail	Andrew	-	no account filed
April 2002	Hail	Andrew	-	no account filed
August 1998	Thunderstorm Wind	Andrew	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Jackson 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

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.

Property	Distance	Listed
Nathaniel Butterworth House	0.7 miles	1992
Thomas Slye House	2.6 miles	1992
DeFries House, Barn and Carpenter Shop	2.8 miles	1992
Insane Asylum at the County Poor Farm	3.2 miles	1992
Kegler Gonner Store and Post Office	5.9 miles	1985
Hurstville Historic District	6.2 miles	1979

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 78001224 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Jackson County	All 77 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.