District No. 72 School

Built in 1882. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

From the record

“The District No. 72 School represents small, rural school-houses in Dakota County in the U.S. state of Minnesota. It was built in 1882, with a bell-tower, clapboard siding, a steep gabled roof, and pediments.”
Wikipedia article District No. 72 School, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 40 National Register listings published here for Dakota County · listed in 1979 · category: Building · built in 1882.

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. 321st St. and Cornell Ave., Northfield, 55057
When was it listed? December 1979
Category. building
Township. Waterford township
When was it built? 1882
National Register reference number. 79001236 - 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

7 since 2001

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 7 fires within 5 miles of District No. 72 School between 2001 and 2012, 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
Recreation and ceremony	5
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	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
13 September 2012	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge	CEDAR AVENUE
23 August 2012	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge	BASS POND 4
1 May 2001	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	2.0 acres	Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge	STOLAF
20 April 2012	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge	BLACK DOG
7 December 2012	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge	BLOOMINGOTN FERRY 1
29 November 2012	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge	SORENSON LANDING 1
22 October 2012	Equipment and vehicle use	1.0 acres	Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge	CO RD 18

Every fire recorded in Dakota County

Mines and quarries near this property

1 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 1 working within 5 miles of District No. 72 School: 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.

Where	Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
	Shilling Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer

Every working recorded in Dakota 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
	Waterford Bridge	0.8 miles	2010
	Christiania Lutheran Free Church	7.2 miles	2010

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 79001236 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Dakota County	All 40 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.