Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.
From the record
“Wanata State Park Picnic Shelter is a historic building located south of Peterson, Iowa, United States. Spaulding from Peterson was instrumental in acquiring the property for the park, which was dedicated in 1934.”
Wikipedia article Wanata State Park Picnic Shelter, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 9 National Register listings published here for Clay County · listed in 1990 · category: Building.
Also known as. CCC Properties in Iowa State Parks MPS
Township. Peterson township
Architect. Central Design Office, Ames
National Register reference number.90001677- 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
10 since 2006
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 10 fires within 5 miles of Wanata State Park Picnic Shelter
between 2006 and 2018, burning about 137 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
4
Smoking
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
12 workings within 5 miles of Wanata State Park Picnic Shelter: 10 past producers, 2 producers.
2 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. 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
Peterson, the town this property stands in, in 28 storm reports between 2001 and 2026: 13 hail, 8 thunderstorm wind, 4 flood, 1 lightning.
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.
Rainfall amounts across Clay County from June 20-22 ranged from 3 to 7 inches. Farther north and upstream, up to 10 inches of rain fell across portions of northwest Iowa. This rainfall resulted in extensive overland flooding and record flooding along the Little Sioux and Ocheyedan Rivers. ||The city of Spencer experienced catastrophic flooding when waters from the Little Sioux and Ocheyedan Rivers overtopped the city's berm system. At peak flooding, approximately 383 people were rescued, leaving hundreds of residents displaced. Eighty homes had collapsed or caved-in foundations and roughly 2,100 structures of the 5,100 throughout the city were damaged by flood waters. Numerous others had sewage backup into their basements. ||Many other residences outside of Spencer were also impacted by flood water. County-wide, over 2,400 households were approved for federal disaster assistance, at a cost of over 22 million dollars. Widespread overland flooding also resulted in numerous township, county, and state roads inundated with water and closed. Preliminary damage assessments estimate loss to public infrastructure to be 3.59 million dollars.||One direct fatality occurred on June 22 when a man drowned after attempting to drive across a flooded road with rapidly flowing water. The vehicle was swept off the roadway and moved downstream before coming to rest along a tree line. ||The majority of overland flooding subsided by June 25, but river flooding continued through the end of the month. For additional information on river flooding, please see other entries for Clay County.
Lightning struck a radio antenna on a house. A radio and converter box were destroyed. Several other pieces of electrical equipment on or in the house were damaged including a television satellite dish and converter boxes, computer, garage door opener, water softener, central vac system, and sky lights. Lightning also struck a tree next to another house, splitting open the tree from top to bottom.
During crop planting season, prolonged flooding led to the loss of or inability to plant crops across the area. Crop loss estimates provided by the United States Department of Agriculture.
Flooding returned to the Little Sioux River in mid-April, and was generally minor with impacts limited to near river agricultural areas. Periodic rain and snow brought 1 to 3 inches of liquid equivalent in the week prior to a return to flood stage near Milford (gage site MIFI4) on April 14. The river crested in minor flood stage (0.8 feet above flood stage) on April 16, before briefly dropping below flood stage on April 19. The river returned quickly above flood stage on April 20 and crested in moderate flood stage 2.8 feet above flood stage on April 26, inundating a large amount of pasture and crop land along the flood plain. The river remained in minor flood stage at the end of the month.
Large hail covered the ground, and caused damage to corn and soybean crops. The amount of crop damage was not known, but some crops were totally destroyed.
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
1 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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