Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
From the record
“The Houston County Courthouse and Jail, located at 304 Marshall Street South in Caledonia, Houston County in the U.S. state of Minnesota, consists of a Romanesque stone courthouse featuring a prominent center tower, built in 1883 and an Italianate stone jail and sheriff residence built in 1875.”
Wikipedia article Houston County Courthouse and Jail, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 16 National Register listings published here for Houston County · listed in 1983 · category: Building.
National Register reference number.83000905- 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.
The ground it stands on
9,241 words
The chapter on Caledonia Township in History of Houston County, Minnesota, published 1919 names Caledonia. This is what it says, exactly as the scans read.
In the early days there were no places of amusement or community center. Until the churches were built, church services and other public meetings were held in the little old school house. Later, they were held in the old court house which was built over the county jail and which accommodated more people. Then a second court house was built which gave a larger seating capacity and it became the public hall. This building was replaced by the present creditable structure which was the largest public hall in Caledonia and was used for all large public gatherings until 1912 when the city hall was completed.
During the winter of 1911 there had been much talk among the more progressive men of the community of the need of some sort of social center, some place in which the people could get together under better conditions than those enjoyed. There were several organizations that needed a better place in which to carry on their work. The old building used as a city council room, voting room, fireman's hall, and public library, was too small for any of their purposes, poorly lighted, badly heated, dirty and with no accommodations fit for any of the purposes for which it was used and, in fact, a disgrace to a town of the size and importance of Caledonia.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 39 fires within 5 miles of Houston County Courthouse and Jail
between 1992 and 2017, burning about 192 acres in total. 1 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
21
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
8
Equipment and vehicle use
8
Natural
1
Recreation and ceremony
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
3 workings within 5 miles of Houston County Courthouse and Jail: 3 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.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Caledonia, the town this property stands in, in 32 storm reports between 1994 and 2022: 16 thunderstorm wind, 9 hail, 2 flash flood, 2 heavy rain.
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.
Lightning struck the Houston County Courthouse and knocked out phone services, destroyed a control module for one of the ventilation units and a copy machine.
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.
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.
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