Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993.
From the record
“Boniface, was a historic Roman Catholic church in Melrose, Minnesota, United States. The church and the adjacent 1907 rectory were listed together on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993 for having local significance in the themes of European ethnic heritage and social history.”
Wikipedia article Church of St. Mary (Melrose, Minnesota), CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 36 National Register listings published here for Stearns County · listed in 1993 · category: Building.
National Register reference number.93001234- 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.
The ground it stands on
1,540 words
The chapter on Melrose City in History of Stearns County, Minnesota, published 1915 names Melrose. This is what it says, exactly as the scans read.
Melrose is situated in the northeast part of the county, and has an area of 26,880 acres. The Sauk river enters the town at the southwest corner and flows in an easterly direction, leaving the town near the southeast corner. This part is mostly a level prairie, having a light sandy soil. The Adley branch runs in a southeasterly direction through the eastern part of the town, and forms a junction with the Sauk river on section thirty-six. Aside from the strip of prairie above mentioned, the surface was originally covered with timber and brush of the varieties peculiar to the locality.
The first four settlers in Melrose were Moses W. Adley and his brother, Warren M., and the brothers Robert and E. C. Wheeler, all natives of Maine. Moses W. Adley arrived at this place on January 10, 1856, but did not settle until the following year, when he took a claim on section thirty-four, which included the' greater portion of the present village of Melrose. Warren M. Adley made a claim a few months later on section thirty-three. E, C. Wheeler settled near the others the
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 1 fire within 5 miles of Church of St. Boniface
in 2007, burning about 20 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
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 federal mineral resources record lists
1 working within 5 miles of Church of St. Boniface: 1 producer.
All of them still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Melrose, the town this property stands in, in 16 storm reports between 1994 and 2024: 9 hail, 4 thunderstorm wind, 1 heavy rain, 1 flash flood.
The reports record 1 injury. 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.
Local officials in Stearns County reported flooding southeast of Freeport on County Road 172 and 157 after midnight. A few cars and a party bus floated off the road into a ditch at that location. One person was injured when the party bus tipped over in the ditch. Part of the road was damaged due to flood waters flowing over that roadway. The town of Albany also had street flooding.
A tornado moved south-southeast through the west side of Melrose. The worst structural damage took place in the northwest side of town. The tornado destroyed a large metal building system and peeled the roof off of several other buildings. Portions of the roof were torn off some townhomes. Hundreds of trees were uprooted or broken. The tornado moved across a golf course, taking down many dozens of trees. In the far southern part of Melrose, more homes sustained damage and the tornado completely destroyed a large machine shed at a farm. After exiting town, the tornado moved across fields and damaged a few more farms. One turkey barn had much of its roof removed and the roof was blown off a large shed shortly before the tornado dissipated.
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
2 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.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
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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