Octagon Barn, Otter Township

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.

From the record

“The Octagon Barn, Otter Township is a historic building located near Milo in rural Warren County, Iowa, United States. It was built in 1900 as a horse and dairy barn.”
Wikipedia article Octagon Barn, Otter Township, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 13 National Register listings published here for Warren County · listed in 1986 · 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. Off IA 205, Milo, 50166
When was it listed? June 1986
Category. building
Also known as. Iowa Round Barns: The Sixty Year Experiment TR
Township. Otter township
National Register reference number. 86001448 - 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

2 since 2009

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 2 fires within 5 miles of Octagon Barn, Otter Township between 2009 and 2015, burning about 4 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	1
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	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
3 April 2009	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	3.0 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
15 October 2015	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named

Every fire recorded in Warren County

Storms near this property

35 since 1998

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Milo, the town this property stands in, in 35 storm reports between 1998 and 2025: 15 hail, 10 thunderstorm wind, 3 flood, 3 heavy rain. The reports record 1 death. 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 2000	Lightning	Milo	1 killed, $65,000	no account filed
July 2014	Flash Flood	Milo	$300,000	Ditches are completely full and flowing through the town of Millo. Roughtly 80 percent of the town still had standing water in the yards up to 3 feet deep.
March 2008	Flood	Milo	$50,000	no account filed
May 2008	Thunderstorm Wind	Milo	$35,000	A barn and trees were blown down in the 5700 block of 170th St.
July 2015	Thunderstorm Wind	Milo	$25,000	Emergency Manager reported tree blown over by the thunderstorm winds. Estimated 2.5 feet in diameter.
July 2008	Flood	Milo	$25,000	no account filed
June 2014	Thunderstorm Wind	Milo	$15,000	Large tree limbs and power lines were blown down.
August 2019	Thunderstorm Wind	Milo	$10,000	Public reported, via mPING app, trees uprooted or snapped; roof blown off.
July 2016	Flash Flood	Milo	$10,000	Emergency Manager relayed report of road closure of 158th Ave south of Newbold St.
June 2010	Hail	Milo	$10,000	no account filed
July 2008	Flood	Milo	$10,000	no account filed
September 2001	Hail	Milo	$10,000	no account filed
April 2009	Thunderstorm Wind	Milo	$5,000	One and one half foot diameter trees downed.
March 2007	Hail	Milo	$5,000	no account filed
March 2006	Hail	Milo	$5,000	no account filed
June 1998	Thunderstorm Wind	Milo	$5,000	no account filed
July 2005	Hail	Milo	$3,000	no account filed
April 1998	Hail	Milo	$3,000	no account filed
March 2006	Hail	Milo	$2,000	no account filed
June 2005	Thunderstorm Wind	Milo	$2,000	no account filed
August 2004	Thunderstorm Wind	Milo	$2,000	no account filed
June 2001	Hail	Milo	$2,000	no account filed
March 2006	Hail	Milo	$1,000	no account filed
June 2025	Heavy Rain	Milo	-	Personal weather station rainfall total of 4.51 inches through midnight.
September 2025	Thunderstorm Wind	Milo	-	A least 2 large trees downed in Milo. Time estimated by radar.
April 2024	Funnel Cloud	Milo	-	Funnel cloud reported near Milo. Location estimated by radar.
May 2024	Thunderstorm Wind	Milo	-	Social media report of tree uprooted from the ground.
June 2021	Hail	Milo	-	Report via mping of penny sized hail.
May 2020	Hail	Milo	-	Emergency management reported quarter sized hail.
May 2020	Heavy Rain	Milo	-	WOI replayed a public report of 2.25 inches of rain. Beginning and end time roughly estimated from radar.
April 2017	Hail	Milo	-	Emergency manager reported quarter sized hail in the town of Milo.
April 2017	Hail	Milo	-	Public reported quarter sized hail via social media.
April 2017	Hail	Milo	-	Emergency manager reported quarter sized hail at 180th and Tripoli.
August 2014	Heavy Rain	Milo	-	Rainfall of 3.75 inches in the past 24 hours.
July 2006	Hail	Milo	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Warren 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

3 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
Lake Ahquabi State Park, Picnic Area (Area A)	7.5 miles	1990
Lake Ahquabi State Park, Refectory Area (Area C)	7.8 miles	1990
Lake Ahquabi State Park, Bathhouse Area (Area B)	7.8 miles	1990

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 86001448 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Warren County	All 13 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.
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.