Carstens Farmstead

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

From the record

“The Carstens Farmstead is a collection of historic buildings located south of Shelby, Iowa, United States. Johan Carstens was a German immigrant who spent eight years living and working in Milwaukee, Chicago, and Davenport, Iowa before settling in Pottawattamie County in 1871, where he established this farm.”
Wikipedia article Carstens Farmstead, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 43 National Register listings published here for Pottawattamie County · listed in 1979 · category: Building.

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

The listing

Address. S of Shelby on IA 168, Shelby, 51570
When was it listed? July 1979
Category. building
Township. Pleasant township
National Register reference number. 79000932 - 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

5 since 2001

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 5 fires within 5 miles of Carstens Farmstead between 2001 and 2016, burning about 130 acres in total. None started naturally. 2 were 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
Arson/incendiarism	2
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	2
Recreation and ceremony	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
1 May 2001	Recreation and ceremony	6.0 acres	Iowa State Fire Marshal's Office	not named
8 April 2014	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	4.0 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
9 March 2016	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	MINDEN FIRE DEPT.
27 March 2015	Arson/incendiarism	40 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
26 March 2015	Arson/incendiarism	80 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named

Every fire recorded in Pottawattamie 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 Carstens Farmstead: 1 unknown. 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
	Unknown	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Unknown

Every working recorded in Pottawattamie 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
Eckle Round Barn	2.5 miles	1986
Pottawattamie County Sub Courthouse	6.1 miles	1981
Graceland Cemetery Chapel	6.2 miles	1986
Charles Henry and Charlotte Norton House	6.2 miles	2004
Francis A. and Rose M. Turner House	6.4 miles	1997
Hancock Savings Bank	8.0 miles

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 79000932 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Pottawattamie County	All 43 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.