Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999.
From the record
“The Viola Creamery is a rural building on the National Register of Historic Places in Viola, Minnesota, United States. It was designed by architect Harold Crawford and in built in 1924.”
Wikipedia article Viola Cooperative Creamery, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 26 National Register listings published here for Olmsted County · listed in 1999 · category: Building.
National Register reference number.99001310- 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
42,390 words
The chapter on Viola Township in History of Olmsted County, Minnesota, published 1910 names Viola. This is what it says, exactly as the scans read.
Rev. Caleb Sawyer was a native of New Hampshire. He was ordained as a Baptist minister, but his occupation in Viola, where he settled in 1856, was that of a farmer. He served two terms as representative. He was of the highest character and universally esteemed. He died in 1881.
In November, 1867, William Brown, of Rochester, was elected sheriff; Charles M. Start, of Rochester, county attorney; L. O. Benjamin, of Rochester, coroner ; Edwin A. Doty, of Viola, Henry J. Grant, of Rochester, and George W. Wirt, of Oronoco county, commissioners. All were Republicans.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 2 fires within 5 miles of Viola Cooperative Creamery
between 1994 and 2006, burning about 1 acre 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
Smoking
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.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
2 workings within 5 miles of Viola Cooperative Creamery: 2 producers.
All of them still produce. What was taken out: Stone, Crushed/Broken. 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
Viola, the town this property stands in, in 5 storm reports between 2006 and 2026: 2 hail, 2 tornado, 1 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.
This strong EF-2 tornado began in rural portions of Olmsted County east of Viola where it damaged some farm outbuildings as it moved northeast. As the tornado approached the Wabasha County line, it strengthened and significantly damaged a farmstead, removing large sections of the roof and other portions of the home and outbuildings. It then continued northeast into Wabasha County.
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
3 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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