Built in 1889. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
From the record
“Brightwood Beach Cottage is an historic octagonal building on the southern shore of Lake Ripley in Litchfield, Minnesota, United States, that once was a part of the Brightwood Beach Resort of the late nineteenth century. The resort opened in 1889, and it offered cultural amenities such as concerts, classes in fine arts, and other live entertainment.”
Wikipedia article Brightwood Beach Cottage, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 10 National Register listings published here for Meeker County · listed in 1978 · category: Building · built in 1889.
National Register reference number.78001551- 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
4 since 2001
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 4 fires within 5 miles of Brightwood Beach Cottage
between 2001 and 2015, burning about 349 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
Debris and open burning
3
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
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 National Weather Service names
Litchfield, the town this property stands in, in 51 storm reports between 1993 and 2025: 27 hail, 19 thunderstorm wind, 2 tornado, 2 funnel cloud.
The reports record 3 injuries. 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.
Fire and rescue officials reported that high winds overturned a trailer camper at Lake Ripley Campground. Three people were pined inside and were transported to the hospital after rescue. A woman and a man in the trailer suffered minor injuries and the third victim, a retired police officer, suffered cracked ribs and numbness in his legs. Two other unoccupied campers were overturned nearby and others were damaged. Trees were also downed around town. A wind gust of 55 MPH was recorded at the Litchfield airport at 3:55 PM CDT.
The tornado near Litchfield was rated an EF-2 with peak winds of 115 mph. It had a maximum width of 100 yards and traveled approximately 3.2 miles. The tornado caused a lot of tree damage, though three single family homes received significant roof damage, and a double wide manufactured home, and garage were flipped and rolled. Another garage and shed were destroyed near Highway 12 on the north side of town.
Quarter to golf ball sized hail was reported by a trained spotter. The county sheriff's office reported that several squad cars sustained hail damage. The windshield on one patrol car was broken by the hail.
Damage survey indicated brief tornado on the west side of Lake Ripley, downing trees and ripping apart sheds and outbuildings. Tornado was accompanied by a large swath of damaging wind.
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.
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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