Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.
From the record
“Christ Episcopal Church is a historic church building in Benson, Minnesota, United States. It is Benson's oldest church, built in 1879 as part of the Episcopal Church's ambitious expansion into western Minnesota under Bishop Henry Benjamin Whipple.”
Wikipedia article Christ Episcopal Church (Benson, Minnesota), CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 9 National Register listings published here for Swift County · listed in 1985 · category: Building.
National Register reference number.85001761- 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 1992
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 2 fires within 5 miles of Christ Church-Episcopal
between 1992 and 2006, burning about 86 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
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.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Benson, the town this property stands in, in 49 storm reports between 1994 and 2025: 21 hail, 16 thunderstorm wind, 6 tornado, 4 funnel cloud.
The reports record 7 injuries. 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.
After several brief tornadoes around Danvers, a much larger tornado struck the east side of Benson and travelled southeast along Highway 212. 71 structures were damaged, including 4 homes and 7 businesses that had to be demolished. The tornado lifted off in DeGraff, but not before damaging one last grain bin, taking the roof off a grain elevator, and knocking several sheds down in DeGraff. Seven people were injured when they fled a van just as the tornado was hitting the vehicle on the eastern edge of Benson. One boy was critically injured but survived and was discharged from the hospital two weeks later. Damage listed encompasses damages from all tornadoes and wind events in Swift County.
Several trees were blown down and a steel building was damaged near the intersection of 40th Street and Highway 29 south of Benson. Dozens of downed trees were scattered across Benson.
A brief tornado touched down just to the northeast of Benson. It took the roof off a shed and hit a grove of trees but caused no other damage. It drew water upward from a slough and then soon thereafter dropped all the water and debris when the tornado dissipated. The tornado was recorded on photos and video.
A tornado developed approximately 3 miles to the SSE of Benson. Visible debris was reported by trained spotters and law enforcement. The tornado caused damage to some farm outbuildings before lifting just north of the intersection of US-12 and 10th St NE. Multiple damage photos and the detailed track were provided, so a virtual storm survey was conducted on this tornado. Its maximum wind was estimated at 95 mph.
Two separate funnel clouds and one tornado developed west and southwest of Benson at the same time. Eyewitness accounts suggest that of the three vortices, only one touched down (see separate entries for the tornado and other funnel cloud).
An ice jam and debris was up against the railroad bridge over Chippewa River in the northwest side of Benson. Water was over a few township roads south and southwest of Benson.
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.
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.
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