Nicholas Marnach House

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

From the record

“The Nicholas Marnach House is the restored home of a Luxembourgish pioneer family in Whitewater Township, Minnesota, United States, built 1857-1860. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 for having state-level significance in the themes of architecture and exploration/settlement.”
Wikipedia article Nicholas Marnach House, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 50 National Register listings published here for Winona County · listed in 1978 · category: Building.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · 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. Marnach, Nicholas, House - the National Register files a house under its owner's surname.
Address. Off Co. Hwy. 26 in Whitewater Wildlife Management Area, Elba, 55910
When was it listed? January 1978
Category. building
Township. Whitewater township
National Register reference number. 78003406 - assigned by the National Park Service when the property was listed.

The ground it stands on

1,072 words

The chapter on Whitewater Township in History of Winona County, published 1883 names Elba. This is what it says, exactly as the scans read.

The su]-face is generally very much broken. On the western part, however, nearly the entire length of the township skirts on Greenwood prairie, in Wabasha county. The township lies in T. 108 N. and R. 10 W. It is bounded on the north and west by Wabasha county, on the east by Mt. Yernon township, and on the south by Elba township. Whitewater lies in the extreme northwestern corner of Winona county. There are two principal valleys - Whitewater valley and Beaver creek valley. Whitewater valley is six miles long, and runs directly north and south through the township. It is traversed by Whitewater river, which enters the township on Sec. 35 and leaves it on Sec. 1. This river attains an average width of forty feet and a depth of three feet. Beaver valley runs almost east and west ; it is four miles long and traversed by Beaver creek. This creek rises in Sec. 19, flows east, and empties into Whitewater river at the village of Beaver on Sec. 15. Timber is abundant along the valleys, and trout plentiful in the streams. There have been two village settlements in the township, viz : Whitewater Falls, now gone to decay, and Beaver. The early history of these is in general the early history of the township.

Passage source: History of Winona County, published 1883.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Whitewater Township - 1,072 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.

Fires near this property

37 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 37 fires within 5 miles of Nicholas Marnach House between 1992 and 2020, burning about 105 acres in total. None started naturally. 6 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
Smoking	8
Debris and open burning	7
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	6
Arson/incendiarism	6
Equipment and vehicle use	6
Recreation and ceremony	4

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
4 June 1992	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
16 June 2003	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
13 June 1992	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
7 May 2018	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
6 May 2004	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
3 April 2016	Debris and open burning	4.0 acres	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
3 April 1996	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
28 April 1996	Smoking	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named

Every fire recorded in Winona County

Mines and quarries near this property

2 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 2 workings within 5 miles of Nicholas Marnach House: 2 producers. All of them still produce. What was taken out: Stone, Crushed/Broken. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Where	Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
	Becker Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Producer
	Kieffer Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Producer

Every working recorded in Winona County

Storms near this property

9 since 2005

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Elba, the town this property stands in, in 9 storm reports between 2005 and 2024: 3 hail, 2 flood, 2 thunderstorm wind, 2 flash flood. 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 2007	Flood	Elba	$60,000	The Middle Fork of the Whitewater River at Whitewater State Park reached a record crest of 19.24 feet. Flood stage is 13.5 feet. The rapid rise of flood waters forced the evacuation of campers throughout the park.
June 2017	Flash Flood	Elba	$25,000	Runoff from heavy rain caused flood waters to flow down a dry run along County Highway 37 between Elba and Altura. The flood waters caused the road bank to erode in several places.
July 2016	Flash Flood	Elba	$10,000	Locally heavy rains produced flash flooding in the Whitewater State Park. This flooding washed out some trail bridges and flooded campsites.
August 2014	Thunderstorm Wind	Elba	$10,000	Trees were blown down at a campground near Elba. The high winds also damaged a picnic shelter, destroyed a storage shed and one of the fallen trees went through the roof of a trailer.
June 2012	Flood	Elba	$5,000	Around 2.5 inches of rain fell in an hour and a half across Whitewater State Park. This sent Trout Run Creek out of its banks producing a debris jamb against a low walking bridge and washed out part of a gravel road.
August 2012	Thunderstorm Wind	Elba	$5,000	A fifteen inch diameter tree was snapped thirty feet above the ground near Whitewater State Park and other trees in the area were pushed over. Corn was flattened with some snapped on the top portion of the stalks.
July 2024	Hail	Elba	-	The public reported quarter sized hail 2 miles east of Elba. The report was relayed via mPING.
May 2018	Hail	Elba	-	Quarter sized hail fell in the Whitewater State Park.
June 2005	Hail	Elba	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Winona 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
	William Hemmelberg House	2.9 miles	1986
	Whitewater State Park CCC/WPA/Rustic Style Historic Resources	5.2 miles	1989

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 78003406 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Winona County	All 50 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.