Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.
From the record
“The Batcher Opera House Block is a historic 1907 building located in downtown Staples, Minnesota, United States. It contained commercial business on the first floor and an opera house on the 2nd floor.”
Wikipedia article Batcher Opera House Block, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 14 National Register listings published here for Todd County · listed in 2004 · category: Building.
National Register reference number.04000837- 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
91 since 1992
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 91 fires within 5 miles of Batcher Opera House Block
between 1992 and 2018, burning about 939 acres in total. None 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
43
Arson/incendiarism
17
Equipment and vehicle use
10
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
9
Railroad operations and maintenance
6
Recreation and ceremony
5
Smoking
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
1 working within 5 miles of Batcher Opera House Block: 1 producer.
All of them still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. 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
Staples, the town this property stands in, in 26 storm reports between 1994 and 2025: 13 thunderstorm wind, 9 hail, 2 tornado, 1 flash 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.
Roofs blown off homes and one business. At least one dozen homes damaged. Numerous large trees down. One minor injury in Staples due to flying glass. Tornado crossed over from Wadena county.
Several trees and power lines were blown down in the City of Staples. In addition, the Staples airport, approximately 1 mile north of downtown Staples, in Wadena County, had a measured wind gust of 79 mph at 531 CST.
Numerous trees were snapped or uprooted. Some trees came down on homes and sheds. The roofs of two garages were blown off, and a camper was rolled about 40 feet. Most damage was in the south side of town.
Several thunderstorm complexes moved through northern Todd and northwestern Morrison Counties where locally four to six inches of rain fell in less than two hours. Due to poor drainage and the excessive rainfall, flash flooding developed in the town of Staples where evacuation occurred in homes on 5th street, and power was shut off to Staples High Rise Apartments on 4th street due to the high water.
A tornado developed in far northern Todd County and hit two farmsteads before exiting into Wadena County (see corresponding entry from NWS Grand Forks). At the first farmstead, a garage door was blown in and part of the garage roof came off. Maximum winds for the Todd County portion were estimated to be 90 mph.
Downburst damage was noted north of the tornado track. Initially, wooden poles were leaning and several oak and pine trees were snapped, and this is where the strongest winds were noted. As the downburst entered Staples, dozens of large trees were uprooted and many large branches were broken from Airport Rd to the east side of town. Winds across Staples were estimated in the 60-70 mph range.
A wide swath of damaging wind accompanied a brief tornado that touched down 7 SW Philbrook. The NWS damage survey, however, determined that the vast majority of the damage in northeastern Todd County was due to the strong wind associated with this tornadic storm. The swath of damaging wind was about six miles wide and 9 miles long in Todd County (it continued for another three miles in Morrison County - see corresponding entry). Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of trees were downed by the winds that blew from northeast to southwest. Some trees fell on houses, outbuildings, and vehicles. Many trees were felled in the community of Philbrook.
Wind gust to 78 mph reported at Staples Municipal Airport, just to the north of Staples in Wadena County. Trees blown down in the city of Staples. Buildings damaged at farmstead on the northwest edge of the city. Roof torn off Stern Rubber Company. Rooftop heating and cooling units ripped off McKechnie Tool and Engineering.
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
1 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.
Block
