Gem County Courthouse

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

From the record

“The Gem County Courthouse, located at the intersection of Main St. and McKinley Ave. in Emmett, serves Gem County, Idaho. The courthouse was built in 1938 to give the small county a government building, as it had been without one since the previous courthouse burned in 1920.”
Wikipedia article Gem County Courthouse, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 10 National Register listings published here for Gem County · listed in 1982 · category: Building.

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

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 building as contributing to the listing.
Address. Main St. and McKinley Ave., Emmett, 83617
When was it listed? November 1982
Category. building
Also known as. Tourtellotte and Hummel Architecture TR
Census division. Emmett Valley
Architectural style. modern architecture
National Register reference number. 82000347 - 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

37 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 37 fires within 5 miles of Gem County Courthouse between 1992 and 2020, burning about 7,958 acres in total. 9 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
Natural	9
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	8
Equipment and vehicle use	5
Fireworks	5
Firearms and explosives use	5
Debris and open burning	2
Recreation and ceremony	1
Arson/incendiarism	1
Other causes	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
5 September 2006	Firearms and explosives use	17 acres	Boise District	SPRING
22 September 2020	Firearms and explosives use	37 acres	Boise District	SCHILL
2 September 1992	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	2.0 acres	Boise District	SANDHOLLOW
12 September 2007	Equipment and vehicle use	67 acres	Boise District	JACKS
3 August 1993	Debris and open burning	20 acres	Boise District	FREEZE OUT
29 August 2012	Firearms and explosives use	9.0 acres	Boise District	BLACK CANYON
28 August 2018	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Boise District	MONUMENT
26 August 2009	Firearms and explosives use	1,262 acres	Boise District	SAND HALLOW

Every fire recorded in Gem County

Mines and quarries near this property

10 of 17 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 17 workings within 5 miles of Gem County Courthouse: 8 producers, 5 past producers, 2 prospects, 1 occurrence. 8 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Silica, Stone, Pumice. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
Payette River	Gold, Platinum	Producer	1865
Pumicite Deposit	Pumice	Occurrence
Unnamed Location	Pumice	Unknown
Emmett Plant	Silica	Producer
Gem Silica Company Deposit	Silica	Past Producer	1946
Gem Silica Sand Deposit	Silica, Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Longhair Mine No 1	Stone	Producer
Longhair Mine No 2	Stone	Producer
Pretty Patty	Stone	Producer
Barnes Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer

Every working recorded in Gem County

Storms near this property

18 since 1996

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Emmett, the town this property stands in, in 18 storm reports between 1996 and 2024: 7 thunderstorm wind, 3 tornado, 2 wildfire, 2 hail. 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.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
June 2010	Flood	Emmett	$1,000,000	Moderate flooding occured in and around Emmett along the Payette River.
May 1996	Thunderstorm Wind	Emmett	$5,000	no account filed
July 2024	Thunderstorm Wind	Emmett	-	A large tree was down, blocking northbound traffic in a residential area in Emmett.
July 2024	Thunderstorm Wind	Emmett	-	A roof on a home was damaged from a down tree.
March 2023	Heavy Rain	Emmett	-	The mesonet station AS061 near Minden, ID measured 0.68 inches of rain.
May 2017	Flood	Emmett	-	The Payette River at Emmett reached minor food stage due to snow melt.
August 2016	Hail	Emmett	-	A follower on social media posted a picture of observed three quarter of an inch hail that dropped out of a thunderstorm near Emmett, Idaho.
August 2004	Tornado (F0)	Emmett	-	Near Sand Hollow, Payette, Gem county line. No damaged reported.
September 2002	Tornado (F0)	Emmett	-	A tornado touched down at Tom's Cabin Road, west of Emmett, in Gem County. It tracked eastward on the ground for a mile, ripping limbs off trees, destroying an outbuilding and damaging houses and a vehicle.
February 2002	Thunderstorm Wind	Emmett	-	Thunderstorms rolled across Gem County producing winds gusting to 53 knots (61 mph) and dropping hail up to 1.0 inches in diameter along a path from 2 miles northwest of Emmett to 2 miles east of Emmett. Numerous trees and power lines were brought down by the storm.
February 2002	Tornado (F0)	Emmett	-	A tornado briefly touched down in the northern part of Emmett. The path of the tornado crossed the Emett cemetery knocking several headstones off of grave sites and twisting limbs off nearby trees.
June 2003	Thunderstorm Wind	Emmett	-	no account filed
July 2002	Thunderstorm Wind	Emmett	-	no account filed
July 2002	Funnel Cloud	Emmett	-	no account filed
June 1998	Hail	Emmett	-	no account filed
August 1997	Wildfire	Emmett	-	no account filed
June 1997	Thunderstorm Wind	Emmett	-	no account filed
October 1997	Wildfire	Emmett	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Gem 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
F. T. Bliss House	0.1 miles	1982
St. Mary's Episcopal Church	0.1 miles	1980
First Baptist Church of Emmett	0.2 miles	1980
Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart	0.2 miles	1980
Emmett Presbyterian Church	0.2 miles	1980
Methodist Episcopal Church	0.2 miles	1980

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 82000347 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Gem County	All 10 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.
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.