John Olness House

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

From the record

“The John Olness House is a house in Kragnes Township, Clay County, Minnesota, just north of Moorhead on U.S. The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as an example of a link between the farm communities and the farm-related businesses in Clay County.”
Wikipedia article John Olness House, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 22 National Register listings published here for Clay County · listed in 1980 · 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.
Listed as. Olness, John, House - the National Register files a house under its owner's surname.
Address. 10066 20th St. N., Georgetown, 56560
When was it listed? May 1980
Category. building
Also known as. Clay County MRA
Township. Kragnes township
Architectural style. Queen Anne style architecture in the United States, Neoclassical architecture
National Register reference number. 80002018 - 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

2 since 2017

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 2 fires within 5 miles of John Olness House between 2017 and 2019, burning about 2 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	2

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
27 April 2019	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	North Dakota State Forest Service	CTY 17 AND CTY 22
25 October 2017	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	North Dakota State Forest Service	COUNTY ROAD 22 AND RED RIVER BRIDGE

Every fire recorded in Clay County

Storms near this property

27 since 1999

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Georgetown, the town this property stands in, in 27 storm reports between 1999 and 2023: 11 hail, 8 thunderstorm wind, 5 flood, 1 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
April 2019	Flood	Georgetown	$50,000	no account filed
June 2010	Flash Flood	Georgetown	$5,000	Three to five inches of rain fell around the Georgetown area, flooding several township roads and fields.
March 2009	Flood	Georgetown	$5,000	no account filed
April 2009	Flood	Georgetown	$5,000	no account filed
August 2001	Thunderstorm Wind	Georgetown	$2,000	Numerous trees were blown down.
July 2001	Thunderstorm Wind	Georgetown	$500	Branches were blown down.
June 2023	Thunderstorm Wind	Georgetown	-	Estimated 8 inch diameter pine tree snapped a few feet above the ground. Wind gust estimated.
June 2014	Thunderstorm Wind	Georgetown	-	Several large 4 to 6 inch diameter trees were broken down in farm shelterbelts.
July 2014	Thunderstorm Wind	Georgetown	-	Numerous four to eight inch diameter tree branches and limbs were broken down in shelterbelts across northeast Georgetown Township.
October 2013	Funnel Cloud	Georgetown	-	A persistent wall cloud was reported.
August 2011	Heavy Rain	Georgetown	-	The thunderstorms dropped 4.70 inches of rain in about two hours.
August 2011	Hail	Georgetown	-	Lots of 0.50 to 0.75 inch hail fell.
April 2011	Flood	Georgetown	-	A 73 year old resident of Oakport Township suffered a heart attack and died while he and his family were filling and placing sandbags to protect their home, located north of Moorhead.
July 2004	Thunderstorm Wind	Georgetown	-	Large tree limbs were blown down.
June 2003	Thunderstorm Wind	Georgetown	-	Trees were blown down.
June 2003	Thunderstorm Wind	Georgetown	-	Tree limbs were blown down.
June 2018	Hail	Georgetown	-	no account filed
March 2010	Flood	Georgetown	-	no account filed
September 2005	Hail	Georgetown	-	no account filed
August 2004	Hail	Georgetown	-	no account filed
June 2003	Hail	Georgetown	-	no account filed
August 2002	Hail	Georgetown	-	no account filed
June 2001	Hail	Georgetown	-	no account filed
July 2001	Hail	Georgetown	-	no account filed
July 1999	Hail	Georgetown	-	no account filed
July 1999	Hail	Georgetown	-	no account filed
July 1999	Hail	Georgetown	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Clay 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
Randolph M. Probstfield House	4.8 miles	1980
John Bergquist House	7.3 miles	1980
Fairmont Creamery Company	8.0 miles	1983

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 80002018 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Clay County	All 22 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.
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.