John Dwan Office Building

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.

From the record

“The John Dwan Office Building, located at 201 Waterfront Drive in Two Harbors, Minnesota, United States, is a historical building in which the 3M Company was founded and which now holds the 3M Birthplace Museum.”
Wikipedia article John Dwan Office Building, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 14 National Register listings published here for Lake County · listed in 1992 · 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.
Listed as. Dwan, John, Office Building - the National Register files a house under its owner's surname.
Address. 201 Waterfront Dr., Two Harbors, 55616
When was it listed? June 1992
Category. building
City. Two Harbors city
Architectural style. Neoclassical architecture
National Register reference number. 92000700 - 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

142 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 142 fires within 5 miles of John Dwan Office Building between 1992 and 2020, burning about 64 acres in total. 1 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
Railroad operations and maintenance	56
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	22
Debris and open burning	19
Equipment and vehicle use	10
Arson/incendiarism	10
Smoking	8
Recreation and ceremony	7
Misuse of fire by a minor	6
Power generation/transmission/distribution	3
Natural	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 September 2011	Railroad operations and maintenance	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
8 September 1997	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
4 September 1993	Railroad operations and maintenance	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
3 September 1998	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
24 September 2012	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
19 September 2000	Debris and open burning	1.5 acres	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
10 September 2011	Railroad operations and maintenance	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
6 August 2007	Railroad operations and maintenance	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named

Every fire recorded in Lake County

Storms near this property

13 since 1995

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Two Harbors, the town this property stands in, in 13 storm reports between 1995 and 2025: 7 hail, 5 thunderstorm wind, 1 flash flood. 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 2021	Thunderstorm Wind	Two Harbors	$5,000	The top part of a healthy pine tree was knocked over by the wind and punctured a garage roof.
August 2001	Thunderstorm Wind	Two Harbors	-	Trees up to 10 inches in diameter were blown down.
July 1995	Thunderstorm Wind	Two Harbors	-	Several trees were blown down. For the second morning in a row, a large complex of severe thunderstorms formed over the western Dakotas in the evening and moved into northeast Minnesota early the following morning. Again, this was primarily a wind event, with no reports of large hail or tornadoes. One man was killed when lightning struck the tree he was standing under. Thunderstorm wind gusts as high as 70 kts (80 mph) were observed as the squall line moved through the region. Many trees and power lines were blown down, causing extensive and widespread power and cable TV outages. Wind damage to boats, vehicles, buildings, and antennas also occurred, either directly or by falling trees. The hardest hit area extended from around Brainarrowrowd in Crow Wing County to near Grand Rapids in Itasca County, then northeast across the Iron Range of central St. Louis County, including the cities of Hibbing, Virginia, and Aurora. In some communities, trucks with plows were needed to clear roads made impassable by fallen trees. Thousands of electric customers were without power for at least 24 hours following the storm. The general manager for the Hibbing Public Utilities said it was the worst windstorm in at least 10 years. Other damage in Hibbing included construction signs and portable toilets that were tipped over. A fabric storage building was lifted by the wind, and an awning was ripped off the Pella Windows store. Trees touching power lines caused a few small fires. Other nearby communities suffering large numbers of downed trees and power outages were Kelly Lake, Chisholm, Nashwauk, Keewatin, and Leetonia. In Grand Rapids, power to half the city was out for hours and hundreds of power lines were down. Highway 169 south of the city was completely blocked by fallen trees. In Virginia, the Boyer True Value Hardware and Lumber store lost the roof from one of its buildings.
March 2025	Hail	Two Harbors	-	no account filed
May 2022	Hail	Two Harbors	-	no account filed
April 2004	Hail	Two Harbors	-	no account filed
July 2001	Hail	Two Harbors	-	no account filed
July 2000	Hail	Two Harbors	-	no account filed
July 2000	Hail	Two Harbors	-	no account filed
July 2000	Hail	Two Harbors	-	no account filed
July 1999	Thunderstorm Wind	Two Harbors	-	no account filed
July 1999	Thunderstorm Wind	Two Harbors	-	no account filed
June 1997	Flash Flood	Two Harbors	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Lake 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
Lake County Courthouse and Sheriff's Residence	under 500 feet	1983
Two Harbors Carnegie Library	0.1 miles	1986
Duluth and Iron Range Railroad Company Depot	0.1 miles	1983
EDNA G (tugboat)	0.3 miles	1975
Two Harbors Light Station	0.6 miles	1984
Bridge No. 3589-Silver Creek Township	2.8 miles	1998

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 92000700 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Lake County	All 14 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.