Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
From the record
“The Elsah Historic District is a 350-acre (140 ha) historic district in Elsah, Illinois. The district includes 48 contributing buildings which reflect the village's period of growth in the 1850s.”
Wikipedia article Elsah Historic District, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 19 National Register listings published here for Jersey County · listed in 1973 · category: District.
National Register reference number.73000706- 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.
The ground it stands on
2,092 words
The chapter on Elsah Township in History of Jersey County, Illinois, published 1919 names Elsah. This is what it says, exactly as the scans read.
Just below the present site of Elsah, James Mason, an officer in the land office at Edwardsville, in April, 1828, entered thirty-five acres in section 20, township 6, range 11, and also land in section 21. The same month, Joseph Klunk entered the northeast fraction of section 25, border¬ ing on the Piasa Creek, where it enters into the Mississippi, east of where the town of Randolph was afterwards projected. Mr. Mason entered additional land in this part of the country the succeeding year, and also made purchases from others who had made entries.
Another forsaken and vanished town of Jersey County was Randolph, which was on the Mississippi River, half a mile above the mouth of Piasa Creek, and was laid out by a man named Bostwick about the same time as Eminence, in either 1836 or 1837. This was the site of the location of one of the earliest settlers of Elsah Township, William Bates. A sawTmill had been established there, and also a store, while there were about a half a dozen dwellings. The prosperity of Randolph declined, and two houses now occupy the site of the former town, the remaining lots having been converted into a farm.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 4 fires within 5 miles of Elsah Historic District
between 2010 and 2011, burning about 37 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
Debris and open burning
2
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
2
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
5 workings within 5 miles of Elsah Historic District: 5 past producers.
None of them still produces. What was taken out: Stone, Crushed/Broken, 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
Elsah, the town this property stands in, in 15 storm reports between 2000 and 2022: 9 thunderstorm wind, 4 hail, 1 tornado, 1 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.
The Mississippi River at Grafton, IL remained at it's highest levels between the morning of June 2nd and the morning of June 12th. In Grafton, a number of homes and businesses on the west side of Illinois Route 100 were flooded during this event.
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.
Block
