Pickle Barrel House

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.

From the record

“The Pickle Barrel House is a two-story cabin built to in the shape of two barrels. The house design is based on the artwork of William Donahey, an author-illustrator who created the Teenie Weenies cartoon characters that were two inches (5.1 cm) tall and lived under a rose bush in a pickle barrel.”
Wikipedia article Pickle Barrel House, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 14 National Register listings published here for Alger County · listed in 2004 · 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 1 building as contributing to the listing.
Address. NE corner Lake Ave. and Randolph St., Burt Township, 49839
When was it listed? February 2004
Category. building
Township. Burt township
National Register reference number. 03001548 - 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

6 since 1995

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 6 fires within 5 miles of Pickle Barrel House between 1995 and 2020, burning about 4 acres in total. None 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
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	2
Power generation/transmission/distribution	2
Debris and open burning	1
Equipment and vehicle use	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 August 2016	Power generation/transmission/distribution	1.7 acres	Michigan Department of Natural Resources	not named
31 July 2019	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Michigan Department of Natural Resources	RIVER FIRE
31 July 2019	Equipment and vehicle use	1.0 acres	Michigan Department of Natural Resources	BURT TOWNSHIP FD 0020197 - 2019
17 July 2013	Power generation/transmission/distribution	under an acre	Michigan Department of Natural Resources	JR. OFFICER
16 June 2020	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	Michigan Department of Natural Resources	BURT TOWNSHIP FD 0000006 - 2020
1 June 1995	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Michigan Department of Natural Resources	not named

Every fire recorded in Alger 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

3 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
Grand Marais Harbor of Refuge Inner and Outer Lights	0.8 miles	2012
Grand Marais Harbor of Refuge Inner and Outer Lights	1.2 miles	2012
Au Sable Light Station	7.3 miles	1978

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 03001548 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Alger County	All 14 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.