Mike and Mary Matson Historic Farmstead

Built in 1900. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.

From the record

“The Mike and Mary Matson Farmstead is a historic farmstead in Embarrass Township, Minnesota, United States. It was established by a Finnish immigrant family around 1900 and includes five surviving buildings constructed with traditional Finnish log architecture.”
Wikipedia article Mike and Mary Matson Farmstead, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 126 National Register listings published here for St. Louis County · listed in 1990 · category: District · built in 1900.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

Listed as. Matson, Mike and Mary, Historic Farmstead - the National Register files a house under its owner's surname.
Address. Off Co. Hwy 21, Tower, 55732
When was it listed? April 1990
Category. district
Also known as. Rural Finnish Log Buildings of St. Louis County, Minnesota, 1890-1930s MPS
Township. Embarrass township
When was it built? 1900
National Register reference number. 90000769 - 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

83 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 83 fires within 5 miles of Mike and Mary Matson Historic Farmstead between 1992 and 2020, burning about 470 acres in total. 3 started naturally. 11 were 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	36
Equipment and vehicle use	14
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	11
Arson/incendiarism	11
Natural	3
Other causes	2
Power generation/transmission/distribution	2
Smoking	2
Recreation and ceremony	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
9 September 2007	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
30 September 2012	Equipment and vehicle use	1.0 acres	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
5 August 2018	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
26 August 2007	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
25 August 2013	Natural	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
8 July 2007	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
21 July 2005	Debris and open burning	1.5 acres	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
21 July 2001	Natural	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named

Every fire recorded in St. Louis County

Storms near this property

7 since 1998

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Tower, the town this property stands in, in 7 storm reports between 1998 and 2019: 6 thunderstorm wind, 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
July 2019	Thunderstorm Wind	Tower	-	An 18 inch diameter tree was downed with the tops of a few 100-year-old pine trees broken off as well.
July 2006	Thunderstorm Wind	Tower	-	Twenty-inch diameter pine trees were blown down on Birch Point of Lake Vermilion.
July 2003	Thunderstorm Wind	Tower	-	Two large trees fell on a truck near Isle of Pines on Lake Vermilion, barely missing its occupants.
July 2004	Thunderstorm Wind	Tower	-	no account filed
April 2003	Hail	Tower	-	no account filed
July 1999	Thunderstorm Wind	Tower	-	no account filed
August 1998	Thunderstorm Wind	Tower	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in St. Louis 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

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.

Property	Distance	Listed
Gregorius and Mary Hanka Historic Farmstead	0.5 miles	1990
Erick and Kristina Nelimark Sauna	1.2 miles	1990
Anna and Mikko Pyhala Farm	1.4 miles	2003
Finnish Apostolic Lutheran Church of Embarrass	1.7 miles	2023
Waino Tanttari Field Hay Barn	2.9 miles	1990
Elias and Lisi Aho Historic Farmstead	3.0 miles	1990

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 90000769 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
St. Louis County	All 126 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.