Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
From the record
“Bethel Church is a historic church building in rural Morning Sun, Iowa, United States. The congregation was organized by the Wapello mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Iowa in 1854.”
Wikipedia article Bethel Church (Morning Sun, Iowa), CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 8 National Register listings published here for Louisa County · listed in 1979 · category: Building.
National Register reference number.79003698- 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
32 since 1996
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 32 fires within 5 miles of Bethel Church
between 1996 and 2017, burning about 953 acres in total. None started naturally. 1 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
18
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
11
Equipment and vehicle use
1
Power generation/transmission/distribution
1
Arson/incendiarism
1
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
5 workings within 5 miles of Bethel Church: 4 past producers, 1 producer.
1 still produces. What was taken out: Stone, Crushed/Broken, Limestone, Dimension, Limestone, Dimension, Flagstone. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
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.
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.
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