Photograph of William Whitley House State Historic Site — Photograph by Unknown, Public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.

William Whitley House State Shrine

Built in 1787. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

From the record

“William Whitley House State Historic Site is a park in Crab Orchard, Kentucky. It features the home of Kentucky pioneer William Whitley and his wife, sharpshooter Esther Whitley.”
Wikipedia article William Whitley House State Historic Site, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 22 National Register listings published here for Lincoln County · listed in 1973 · category: Building · built in 1787.

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 1 building as contributing to the listing.
Listed as. Whitley, William, House State Shrine - the National Register files a house under its owner's surname.
Address. 2 mi. W of Crab Orchard off U.S. 150, Crab Orchard, 40484
When was it listed? April 1973
Category. building
Census division. Crab Orchard
When was it built? 1787
National Register reference number. 73000814 - 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

49 since 1998

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 49 fires within 5 miles of William Whitley House State Shrine between 1998 and 2020, burning about 809 acres in total. None started naturally. 9 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
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	18
Debris and open burning	16
Arson/incendiarism	9
Recreation and ceremony	6

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
30 September 1998	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	25 acres	Kentucky Division of Forestry	not named
21 September 2020	Debris and open burning	40 acres	Kentucky Division of Forestry	PETTIT
28 August 1998	Arson/incendiarism	1.0 acres	Kentucky Division of Forestry	not named
1 May 2001	Arson/incendiarism	25 acres	Kentucky Division of Forestry	not named
3 April 2010	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Kentucky Division of Forestry	not named
29 April 2001	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	Kentucky Division of Forestry	not named
28 April 2018	Arson/incendiarism	3.0 acres	Kentucky Division of Forestry	OLD CHAPEL GAP SCHOOL
5 March 2000	Arson/incendiarism	50 acres	Kentucky Division of Forestry	not named

Every fire recorded in Lincoln County

Storms near this property

8 since 1999

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Crab Orchard, the town this property stands in, in 8 storm reports between 1999 and 2025: 5 thunderstorm wind, 2 hail, 1 tornado. 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
August 1999	Tornado (F0)	Crab Orchard	$70,000	A tornado touched down briefly, rendering a trailer unsalvageable. The roof of the trailer was blown 200 feet.
August 1999	Thunderstorm Wind	Crab Orchard	$50,000	Numerous trees and power lines down
February 2009	Thunderstorm Wind	Crab Orchard	$10,000	A barn was demolished in the Maywood area.
May 2025	Thunderstorm Wind	Crab Orchard	-	A tree was blown down on Old Fall Lick Road.
July 2006	Thunderstorm Wind	Crab Orchard	-	Trees were downed.
May 2002	Thunderstorm Wind	Crab Orchard	-	Six power poles were blown down.
August 1999	Hail	Crab Orchard	-	Hail damaged tobacco crops
July 2000	Hail	Crab Orchard	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Lincoln 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

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.

Property	Distance	Listed
Walnut Meadows	1.8 miles	1978
Confederate Monument at Crab Orchard	2.6 miles	1997
Adam Pence House	4.6 miles	1978
John Baughman House	5.8 miles	1978
John Logan House	6.7 miles	1975
Swope-Dudderar House and Mill Site	6.7 miles	1979

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 73000814 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Lincoln County	All 22 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.