Built in 1895 (Queen Anne style). Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.
From the record
“The Edgar Backus Schermerhorn House is a historic house located at 803 E. 5th St. in Galena, Kansas. The house was built circa 1895 for Edgar Backus Schermerhorn, a wealthy businessman who owned many of the area's lead and zinc mines.”
Wikipedia article Edgar Backus Schermerhorn House, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 15 National Register listings published here for Cherokee County · listed in 1989 · category: Building · built in 1895, Queen Anne style.
National Register reference number. 89001146 - assigned by the National Park Service when the property was listed.
Fires near this property
101 since 1992
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 101 fires within 5 miles of Edgar Backus Schermerhorn House
between 1992 and 2020, burning about 941 acres in total. 2 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
52
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
33
Equipment and vehicle use
7
Recreation and ceremony
3
Smoking
3
Natural
2
Power generation/transmission/distribution
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
564 workings within 5 miles of Edgar Backus Schermerhorn House: 564 past producers.
None of them still produces. What was taken out: Lead, Zinc, Zinc, Lead, Zinc. 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
Galena, the town this property stands in, in 38 storm reports between 1995 and 2025: 15 thunderstorm wind, 13 hail, 5 flash flood, 2 flood.
The reports record 1 injury. 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 National Weather Service storm survey determined that an EF-1 tornado with maximum winds of 100 mph touched down just west of the Missouri state line and traveled a half mile to the northeast before passing into Missouri. As it crossed the border the storm intensified to an EF3 with an estimated 140 mph winds. This tornado was produced by the supercell that spawned the Treece tornado and continued to produce funnel clouds very near the ground through Riverton and the north Galena area before the tornado touched down near Woodchuck Drive and caused roof damage to two homes and downed several trees as it crossed into Missouri along SE 118th Street.
Three to five inches of rain fell over Cherokee County. Nearly all low lying areas that typically flood during periods of excessive rainfall were flooded. Areas that were impacted the greatest occurred within the lowlands of northwest Cherokee County. Cherry Creek, Lightning Creek, and the Neosho River are all located in this region. All three of these water systems flooded, resulting in several thousand acres of farmland to flood.
Widespread flooding occurred across the county. More specifically, Lightning Creek, Cherry Creek, and Fly Creek all flooded low lying areas and several roads. Street flooding occurred in Baxter Springs.
All low lying roads and areas that typically flood during episodes of flooding were flooded. The Emergency Management Director stated that there were too many flooded locations to specify to the NWS. Streams that flooded multiple locations included Cow, Lightning, Brush, Fly, and Cherry creeks.
Widespread flooding resulted from three to five inches of rain that fell over Cherokee County. Brush Creek, Lightning Creek, Fly Creek, Cherry Creek, Cow Creek, and Deer Creek all flooded nearby county roads and lowlands.
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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