Benham Historic District

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

From the record

“The Benham Historic District is a historic district encompassing ten buildings and a public park in Benham, Kentucky. The buildings form the historic center of the coal town of Benham.”
Wikipedia article Benham Historic District, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 5 National Register listings published here for Harlan County · listed in 1983 · category: District.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

Address. KY 160, Central Ave., McKnight and Cypress Sts., Benham, 40823
When was it listed? July 1983
Category. district
Census division. Cumberland
National Register reference number. 83002785 - 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

89 since 1997

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 89 fires within 5 miles of Benham Historic District between 1997 and 2020, burning about 10,206 acres in total. 2 started naturally. 17 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	35
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	26
Arson/incendiarism	17
Recreation and ceremony	6
Natural	2
Equipment and vehicle use	1
Misuse of fire by a minor	1
Railroad operations and maintenance	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
7 September 2005	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	8.0 acres	Kentucky Division of Forestry	not named
4 September 2007	Debris and open burning	125 acres	Kentucky Division of Forestry	LITTLE SHEPHERD TRAIL
24 September 2007	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	Kentucky Division of Forestry	not named
28 June 2012	Equipment and vehicle use	1.5 acres	Kentucky Division of Forestry	CHUCK FIRE
23 June 2008	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Kentucky Division of Forestry	not named
21 June 2002	Recreation and ceremony	20 acres	Kentucky Division of Forestry	not named
20 June 2016	Recreation and ceremony	1.0 acres	Kentucky Division of Forestry	SANDHILL
19 June 2008	Natural	1.0 acres	Kentucky Division of Forestry	not named

Every fire recorded in Harlan County

Mines and quarries near this property

3 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 3 workings within 5 miles of Benham Historic District: 2 prospects, 1 past producer. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Iron, Silica. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status
Hurricane Gap Sand Pit	Silica	Prospect
J.H. Mills Prospect	Iron	Prospect
Orebank Ridge	Iron	Past Producer

Every working recorded in Harlan County

Storms near this property

1 since 2022

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Benham, the town this property stands in, in 1 storm report in 2022: 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 2022	Thunderstorm Wind	Benham	-	A member of the public reported a tree blown down onto Mountain Street in Lynch, KY.

Every storm recorded in Harlan 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

2 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.

Photograph	Property	Distance	Listed
	Lynch Historic District	1.8 miles	2003
	Cumberland Central Business District	2.4 miles	1996

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 83002785 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Harlan County	All 5 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.
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.