Alex Seitaniemi Housebarn

Built in 1913. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.

From the record

“The Alex Seitaniemi Housebarn is a rare surviving example of a log housebarn constructed by Finnish Americans, located in Waasa Township, Minnesota, United States. It was built in two stages from about 1907 to about 1913.”
Wikipedia article Alex Seitaniemi Housebarn, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 126 National Register listings published here for St. Louis County · listed in 1990 · category: Building · built in 1913.

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.
Listed as. Seitaniemi, Alex, Housebarn - the National Register files a house under its owner's surname.
Address. Off Twnshp. Rd. 797, Tower, 55732
When was it listed? April 1990
Category. building
Also known as. Rural Finnish Log Buildings of St. Louis County, Minnesota, 1890-1930s MPS
Township. Waasa township
When was it built? 1913
National Register reference number. 90000771 - 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

70 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 70 fires within 5 miles of Alex Seitaniemi Housebarn between 1992 and 2020, burning about 274 acres in total. 3 started naturally. 10 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	29
Equipment and vehicle use	12
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	10
Arson/incendiarism	10
Natural	3
Smoking	2
Recreation and ceremony	2
Other causes	1
Power generation/transmission/distribution	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
5 August 2018	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
31 August 2006	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
27 August 2011	Arson/incendiarism	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
21 August 2012	Natural	4.0 acres	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
12 August 1995	Smoking	2.0 acres	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
21 July 2005	Debris and open burning	1.5 acres	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
17 July 2007	Debris and open burning	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
Waino Tanttari Field Hay Barn	1.2 miles	1990
Hartley Building	3.2 miles	1989
Gregorius and Mary Hanka Historic Farmstead	3.3 miles	1990
Elias and Lisi Aho Historic Farmstead	3.6 miles	1990
Mike and Mary Matson Historic Farmstead	3.6 miles	1990
Anna and Mikko Pyhala Farm	3.8 miles	2003

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 90000771 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.