Whitewater Avenue Commercial Historic District

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.

From the record

“The Whitewater Avenue Commercial Historic District is a small historic district in St. It consists of a row of seven buildings stretching one and a half blocks along the west side of Whitewater Avenue.”
Wikipedia article Whitewater Avenue Commercial Historic District, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 50 National Register listings published here for Winona County · listed in 1984 · category: District.

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 7 buildingss as contributing to the listing.
Address. 900-1012 Whitewater Ave., St. Charles, 55972
When was it listed? August 1984
Category. district
City. St. Charles city
National Register reference number. 84001736 - 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

10,138 words

The chapter on St. Charles City in History of Winona County, published 1883 names St. Charles. This is what it says, exactly as the scans read.

The city of St. Charles is located in a triangular valley, through which, on the north side, flows the Whitewater river. This valley has been formed by the erosion and removal of the original layers down to solid magnesian limestone, and upon the bed of that layer the city is located, while upon every side are displayed the precipitous sides of those ancient layers which have remained protected by their cap of solid flags of Trenton limestone, and have withstood the forces of the destroying elements.

Passage source: History of Winona County, published 1883.

The lower Trenton formation here has been described by Prof. N. H. Winchell, state geologist, in the following language : " At a quarry near St. Charles, half a mile south of the city, the lowest portion of the Trenton appears as follows, in descending order: No. 1, hard, crystalline, calcareous layers, ringing under the hammer ; of a light drab color, without shale ; fossiliferous, fifteen feet. No. 2, bluish-green shale, about ten feet. Total, Trenton, twentyfive feet."

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 St. Charles City - 10,138 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.

Fires near this property

11 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 11 fires within 5 miles of Whitewater Avenue Commercial Historic District between 1992 and 2008, burning about 5 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
Smoking	6
Equipment and vehicle use	2
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1
Railroad operations and maintenance	1
Debris and open burning	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
9 July 2008	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
3 July 1996	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
27 June 2005	Smoking	1.0 acres	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
27 June 2002	Smoking	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
25 May 1992	Smoking	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
28 April 1998	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
26 April 2000	Smoking	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
17 April 2007	Smoking	2.0 acres	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named

Every fire recorded in Winona 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 Whitewater Avenue Commercial Historic District: 1 producer. 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
	Bailey Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Producer

Every working 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

4 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
Trinity Episcopal Church	0.2 miles	1984
St. Charles City Bakery	0.2 miles	1984
Whitewater State Park CCC/WPA/Rustic Style Historic Resources	5.1 miles	1989
Benjamin Ellsworth House	5.7 miles	1984

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 84001736 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.