Giant City Stone Fort Site

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.

From the record

“The Giant City Stone Fort Site is the site of a prehistoric stone enclosure located within Giant City State Park in Jackson County, Illinois, United States. The Stone Fort dates to the Late Woodland period and was constructed and used in the period from c.”
Wikipedia article Giant City Stone Fort Site, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 19 National Register listings published here for Jackson County · listed in 2002 · category: Site.

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 site as contributing to the listing.
Address. Stone Fort Rd., Makanda, 62958
When was it listed? August 2002
Category. site
Township. Makanda township
National Register reference number. 02000848 - 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

13 since 1995

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 13 fires within 5 miles of Giant City Stone Fort Site between 1995 and 2020, burning about 24 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
Recreation and ceremony	4
Smoking	2
Debris and open burning	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
11 August 1999	Smoking	under an acre	Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge	ROCKYCOMF1
8 April 2013	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	2.0 acres	Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge	GENTRY
8 April 1995	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge	DKCAMP#1
7 April 1995	Smoking	under an acre	Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge	DKLINE#1
3 April 2016	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge	ARROW FIRE
14 April 2006	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Shawnee National Forest	ROWAN
27 February 2010	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.5 acres	Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge	PINE RIDGE
23 November 2008	Other causes	under an acre	Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge	GENTRY

Every fire recorded in Jackson County

Storms near this property

12 since 2004

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Makanda, the town this property stands in, in 12 storm reports between 2004 and 2023: 7 thunderstorm wind, 2 hail, 1 heavy rain, 1 tornado. 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
February 2012	Tornado (EF2)	Makanda	$100,000	The tornado passed into southeast Jackson County from Union County. The tornado was only on the ground for a short time in Jackson County before it lifted. The damage path ended in Giant City State Park. Thousands of trees were snapped or uprooted. Barns and grain bins were destroyed, along with downed power lines. Peak winds were estimated near 115 mph. The average path width was 250 yards.
February 2012	Thunderstorm Wind	Makanda	$50,000	A downburst averaging 1/2 mile wide resulted in thousands of trees being snapped or uprooted in the Devil's Kitchen Lake area, around and east of the Giant City State Park area. Peak winds were estimated near 110 mph.
September 2012	Thunderstorm Wind	Makanda	$5,000	Several trees were blown down.
May 2023	Thunderstorm Wind	Makanda	$2,000	A tree and power lines were down across Old Highway 51.
March 2023	Thunderstorm Wind	Makanda	$2,000	A tree and a power line was blown down.
June 2019	Thunderstorm Wind	Makanda	$2,000	Two trees were covering Rocky Comfort Road.
April 2017	Flood	Makanda	-	The flash flooding during the overnight and early morning hours transitioned to a more prolonged flooding situation. Several city streets were flooded and impassable in Carbondale, including a main thoroughfare. Highway 51 was flooded in a couple of spots in the Carbondale area. In Makanda, the city park was underwater. A Canadian National railroad track was flooded at a street crossing. A trained spotter near the western border of the county measured 4.20 inches during the overnight and early morning storms.
July 2016	Thunderstorm Wind	Makanda	-	Tree limbs about two to three inches in diameter were blown down.
May 2009	Hail	Makanda	-	Quarter-size hail fell in Giant City State Park.
July 2005	Heavy Rain	Makanda	-	Standing water was on secondary roads due to heavy rainfall amounts estimated by radar from one to two inches.
May 2004	Thunderstorm Wind	Makanda	-	A couple of trees were blown down in the Makanda and Grand Tower areas.
June 2023	Hail	Makanda	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Jackson 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
Giant City State Park Lodge and Cabins	2.3 miles	1985
Reef House	7.0 miles	1985
Fuller, R. Buckminster, and Anne Hewlett Dome Home	7.0 miles	2006
West Walnut Street Historic District	7.2 miles	1975
Woodlawn Cemetery	7.2 miles	1985
Illinois Central Railroad Passenger Depot	7.3 miles	2002

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 02000848 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Jackson County	All 19 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.