Wakarusa Hotel

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

From the record

One of 108 National Register listings published here for Shawnee County · listed in 1979 · category: Building.

Sources: 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., Wakarusa, 66546
When was it listed? April 1979
Category. building
Township. Williamsport township
National Register reference number. 79000955 - assigned by the National Park Service when the property was listed.

Fires near this property

124 since 2006

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 124 fires within 5 miles of Wakarusa Hotel between 2006 and 2020, burning about 1,295 acres in total. None 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
Debris and open burning	73
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	38
Smoking	6
Recreation and ceremony	3
Equipment and vehicle use	3
Arson/incendiarism	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
20 August 2015	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Kansas Forest Service	948
12 August 2015	Debris and open burning	3.0 acres	Kansas Forest Service	916
8 July 2018	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	Kansas Forest Service	280
2 July 2006	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Shawnee County	not named
18 July 2017	Debris and open burning	3.0 acres	Osage County	196
11 July 2017	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.5 acres	Shawnee County	248
28 June 2018	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Kansas Forest Service	713
19 June 2015	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Kansas Forest Service	710

Every fire recorded in Shawnee County

Storms near this property

10 since 1999

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Wakarusa, the town this property stands in, in 10 storm reports between 1999 and 2023: 6 hail, 3 flood, 1 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
May 2007	Flood	Wakarusa	$2,000,000	Most homes in the town of Wakarusa inundated with flood waters from the Wakarusa River. Water rescues of 22 residents stranded on their rooftops were conducted by the fire department. The rescues were hampered by floating propane tanks. Numerous roads in the county were closed by flood waters. Topeka city schools and some surrounding schools canceled classes. 500 water rescues were made in Topeka...300 along the Shunganunga Creek alone. The Rossville nursing home evacuated it's residents as a caution of flooding due to Cross Creek. Lake Sherwood, southwest of Topeka, reported water three feet above the emergency spillway. Numerous county roads were closed due to the flooding. Lowland flooding continued in the vicinity of Topeka with moderate or greater flooding along the Kansas River.
July 2023	Thunderstorm Wind	Wakarusa	-	Wind gust to 65 mph.
August 2016	Hail	Wakarusa	-	Time was estimated by radar.
May 2010	Flood	Wakarusa	-	A sheriff's deputy reported that the intersection of 101st and Burlingame Road is impassible due to flooding.
May 2010	Flood	Wakarusa	-	An emergency manager reported 109th Street was closed due to flooding.
September 2019	Hail	Wakarusa	-	no account filed
May 2016	Hail	Wakarusa	-	no account filed
May 2016	Hail	Wakarusa	-	no account filed
May 2016	Hail	Wakarusa	-	no account filed
May 1999	Hail	Wakarusa	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Shawnee 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

4 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
Thomas Arch Bridge	3.6 miles	1990
McCauley Bridge	6.4 miles	1985
Union Church Building	6.6 miles	2024
Horace G. Lyons House	7.8 miles	1984

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 79000955 in Record Group 79.
Shawnee County	All 108 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.