Frank Wheeler Hotel

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.

From the record

“Frank Wheeler Hotel, also known as the Brown-Wheeler House, is a historic hotel building located at Freetown, Indiana. It was built in 1890, and is a modest two-story, Queen Anne style frame building.”
Wikipedia article Frank Wheeler Hotel, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 19 National Register listings published here for Jackson County · listed in 1991 · 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 3 buildingss as contributing to the listing.
Listed as. Wheeler, Frank, Hotel - the National Register files a house under its owner's surname.
Address. Jct. of Second and Main Sts., Freetown, 47235
When was it listed? August 1991
Category. building
Township. Pershing township
Architectural style. Queen Anne style architecture in the United States
National Register reference number. 91001161 - 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

42 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 42 fires within 5 miles of Frank Wheeler Hotel between 1992 and 2016, burning about 166 acres in total. None started naturally. 11 were 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	23
Arson/incendiarism	11
Recreation and ceremony	3
Equipment and vehicle use	2
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1
Power generation/transmission/distribution	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
26 September 1999	Power generation/transmission/distribution	3.0 acres	Hoosier National Forest	POWERLINE
6 August 2001	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Hoosier National Forest	BROWN
4 August 2005	Arson/incendiarism	3.0 acres	Hoosier National Forest	LUTES FIRE
9 April 2012	Other causes	under an acre	Hoosier National Forest	HOUSTON NORTH
5 April 2001	Debris and open burning	7.0 acres	Hoosier National Forest	FUEL
5 April 2001	Debris and open burning	2.0 acres	Hoosier National Forest	CORNER
2 April 1998	Recreation and ceremony	1.0 acres	Hoosier National Forest	BERRY RIDGE
17 April 2016	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.5 acres	Hoosier National Forest	FREETOWN

Every fire recorded in Jackson County

Storms near this property

7 since 2001

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Freetown, the town this property stands in, in 7 storm reports between 2001 and 2025: 7 thunderstorm wind. 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
April 2022	Thunderstorm Wind	Freetown	$20,000	Thunderstorm winds downed multiple trees along Indiana State Route 258 from Freetown to Courtland. Some trees fell into power lines.
August 2012	Thunderstorm Wind	Freetown	$6,000	Trees and street signs were down in Freetown due to damaging thunderstorm wind gusts.
June 2025	Thunderstorm Wind	Freetown	$3,000	Multiple trees downed by thunderstorm wind gusts.
May 2002	Thunderstorm Wind	Freetown	$1,000	Trees down
May 2006	Thunderstorm Wind	Freetown	-	Trees were downed.
March 2006	Thunderstorm Wind	Freetown	-	no account filed
July 2001	Thunderstorm Wind	Freetown	-	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.

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 91001161 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.