Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.
From the record
“The Sprague, Brown, and Knowlton Store is a historic building located in Winterset, Iowa, United States. Built in 1866 to house a dry goods store, it is an early example of a vernacular limestone commercial building.”
Wikipedia article Sprague, Brown, and Knowlton Store, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 55 National Register listings published here for Madison County · listed in 1987 · category: Building.
Also known as. Legacy in Stone: The Settlement Era of Madison County, Iowa TR
City. Winterset city
National Register reference number.87001690- 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
3 since 2009
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 3 fires within 5 miles of Sprague, Brown, and Knowlton Store
in 2009, burning about 6 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
3
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
14 workings within 5 miles of Sprague, Brown, and Knowlton Store: 9 past producers, 5 producers.
5 still produce. What was taken out: Stone, Crushed/Broken, Clay. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Winterset, the town this property stands in, in 116 storm reports between 1993 and 2025: 46 hail, 44 thunderstorm wind, 13 heavy rain, 5 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.
Low lying areas full of water, some streets in town impassable due to flooded intersections. Multiple reports of flood water entering homes and vehicles throughout town. Iowa highway 92 blocked in both directions due to flood waters west of town.
Law Enforcement reported a few 4 to 6 inch tree limbs and a few trees downed in Winterset. Additional trees were reported snapped south and west of town. Delay report and time estimated from radar.
A strong southerly flow of moist and unstable air moved over Iowa during the afternoon of the 29th. Thunderstorms erupted during the late afternoon and early evening hours. There were numerous reports of gusty winds and pea- to marble-size hail with the storms as the overspread the west half of Iowa. A few of the storms became severe over south central into central Iowa. Three-quarter-inch diameter hail fell from the storms as the approached the Des Moines metropolitan area in Madison County. Three-quarter-inch diameter hail also fell in Guthrie County. Lightning from the storms resulted in numerous brief power outages. Some power outages were reported due tree limbs being downed by gusty winds.
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.
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.
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