A National Historic Landmark. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970.
From the record
“The Church of the Holy Family is a Catholic parish located at 116 Church Street in Cahokia Heights, Illinois. The congregation is said to be the oldest continuously active Catholic parish in the United States, having been founded in 1699 by Canadian missionaries, and is the oldest church building west of the Allegheny Mountains.”
Wikipedia article Church of the Holy Family (Cahokia Heights, Illinois), CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 27 National Register listings published here for St. Clair County · listed in 1970 · category: Building · a National Historic Landmark.
National Register reference number.70000851- 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 2006
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 2 fires within 5 miles of Church of the Holy Family
between 2006 and 2014, burning about 2 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
Misuse of fire by a minor
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.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
41 workings within 5 miles of Church of the Holy Family: 32 past producers, 5 plants, 3 producers, 1 prospect.
8 still produce. What was taken out: Stone, Crushed/Broken, Sand and Gravel, Construction, Clay, Fire Clay (Refractory), Coal. 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
Cahokia, the town this property stands in, in 20 storm reports between 1993 and 2021: 13 thunderstorm wind, 5 hail, 2 lightning.
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.
A lighting strike started a fire which destroyed a double wide mobile home in Cahokia. The woman resident along with her 3 dogs and 2 cats escaped without injury.
A 67 mph wind gust was recorded at St. Louis Downtown Airport. In Belleville, a small tree was uprooted and numerous tree limbs were blown down around town. Numerous tree limbs were blown down in Millstadt. In Freeburg, several power lines were blown down at the intersection of Illinois Route 15 and Jefferson Road. Also, several trees and numerous tree limbs were blown down around town.
An early morning fire at a propane facility in Cahokia was caused by a lightning strike. The lighting hit a manifold where two 10 inch high pressure lines converge. Flames were reported shooting 100 feet into the air. Shut off valves on the lines were closed, but since one valve was 3 miles away, the fire continued until early afternoon as the residual fuel in the line burned off.
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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