Photograph of Sam Brown Memorial State Wayside — Photograph by McGhiever, CC BY-SA 3.0. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Fort Wadsworth Agency and Scout Headquarters Building

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.

From the record

“Sam Brown Memorial State Wayside is a historical park in Browns Valley, Minnesota, United States, established in 1929 to honor frontiersman Sam Brown (1845-1925). On April 19, 1866, Brown rode 55 miles (89 km) to warn other settlers of an impending attack by Native Americans, and when the threat proved false he rode back through a spring blizzard to intercept his dispatch to the U.S.”
Wikipedia article Sam Brown Memorial State Wayside, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 5 National Register listings published here for Traverse County · listed in 1986 · 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.
Address. Broadway and Dakota Aves., Browns Valley, 56211
When was it listed? July 1986
Category. building
Township. Arthur township
National Register reference number. 86001672 - 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 2002

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 2 fires within 5 miles of Fort Wadsworth Agency and Scout Headquarters Building between 2002 and 2019, burning about 2 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
Natural	1
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	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
30 April 2019	Natural	1.4 acres	Morris National Wildlife Refuge	MNBNR-FY19-WF-MURPHY WF
10 December 2002	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	Morris National Wildlife Refuge	ROBIN HOOD WPA

Every fire recorded in Traverse County

Storms near this property

3 since 1994

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Browns Valley, the town this property stands in, in 3 storm reports between 1994 and 1997: 1 thunderstorm wind, 1 tornado, 1 hail. 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
May 1994	Thunderstorm Wind	Browns Valley	-	,,,,,,,,Hail (0.75)
October 1994	Tornado (F0)	Browns Valley	-	A small tornado traveled along an intermittent path east of Browns Valley damaging several buildings on a local farmstead.
June 1997	Hail	Browns Valley	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Traverse 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

1 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
	Browns Valley Carnegie Public Library	7.8 miles	1985

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 86001672 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Traverse County	All 5 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.