Built in 1848. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.
From the record
“Joseph Church is a historic Roman Catholic church located on Main Street in Westphalia, Osage County, Missouri. The Gothic-Romanesque building was constructed in 1848.”
Wikipedia article St. Joseph Church (Westphalia, Missouri), CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 9 National Register listings published here for Osage County · listed in 1972 · category: Building · built in 1848.
National Register reference number.72000726- 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
16 since 1992
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 16 fires within 5 miles of St. Joseph Church
between 1992 and 2014, burning about 103 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
15
Equipment and vehicle use
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
5 workings within 5 miles of St. Joseph Church: 5 past producers.
None of them still produces. What was taken out: Fire Clay (Refractory), 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
Westphalia, the town this property stands in, in 17 storm reports between 1999 and 2024: 8 thunderstorm wind, 6 hail, 2 flash flood, 1 tornado.
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.
Thunderstorm winds caused scattered damage throughout Osage county. In Westphalia, the roof of a gym on a school sustained major damage when a large portion of the roof was blown off. Further to the east on County Road 811, a large tree was blown down onto a mobile home cutting it into two. No injuries were reported at this location. On County Road 806, a horse barn was blown down. The horses were unhurt, but an RV stored in the barn was damaged. A shed across the street was destroyed as well. In Linn, the high winds damaged several pieces of equipment for track and field events at the high school and a rooftop A/C unit was blown on its side at the elementary school.
Widespread wind damage across Osage County. A roof was blown off of a storage building at the intersection of Highway 133 and County Road 503. Also, there were numerous trees blown down along Highway 133. A roof was blown off of a business on U.S. Highway 63 about two miles north of Westphalia. A large tree was blown down onto U.S. Highway 63 blocking both lanes. Just east of Loose Creek a home sustained minor damage and another home sustained minor damage from a trampoline being blown into it. Otherwise, numerous large tree limbs were blown down.
Thunderstorm winds blew over two large pine trees onto U.S. Highway 63 south of Westphalia. Further to the east northeast, several trees were blown down along U.S. Highway 50 about 5 to 8 miles east of Linn.
A tornado touched down less than a mile west of Westphalia in northwest Osage County. A couple of large tree limbs were blown down in this location. The tornado travelled to the north northeast across U.S. Highway 63 to about 1.5 miles north of Westphalia, where it caused minor damage to two homes and downed large tree branches. The tornado continued to move to the north northeast crossing the Maries River. Tree damage was observed along the southern shore of the river. The tornado then moved across a large flood plain and struck a large cluster of oak and cedar trees at a farmstead on a ridge. Some of the oak trees were three feet in diameter and were either uprooted or snapped at the base. There were a couple of small utility buildings that were destroyed northeast of this area. There was also a row of cedar trees blown down to the northeast showing a convergent pattern. The damage width over this area was 60 yards and the damage was rated EF1. The tornado continued to skip and partially grazed a second farmstead and damaged two small buildings and trees. The tornado continued to skip across U.S. Highway 50 approximately half a mile west of Loose Creek before it ended on County Road 412, about a mile northwest of Loose Creek. The total damage track was 6.6 miles long.
Three to four inches of rain fell over Osage county over a short period of time on already saturated soils. Numerous roads were closed due to flooding including County Roads 508 and 542 near Meta, Highway W northwest of Linn, and Highway P west of Koeltztown.
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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