Howard Lepper Memorial Hall

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2020.

From the record

One of 5 National Register listings published here for Petroleum County · listed in 2020 · category: Building.

Sources: the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 building as contributing to the listing.
Address. Just west of Flatwillow Rd., Flatwillow, 59087
When was it listed? August 2020
Category. building
Census division. Winnett South
National Register reference number. 100005396 - assigned by the National Park Service when the property was listed.

Fires near this property

5 since 2001

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 5 fires within 5 miles of Howard Lepper Memorial Hall between 2001 and 2020, burning about 590 acres in total. 2 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
Natural	2
Equipment and vehicle use	2
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.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
8 August 2001	Natural	57 acres	Miles City Field Office	HOWARDCOUL
17 August 2010	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	400 acres	North Central Montana District	KLAMERT
8 July 2016	Natural	131 acres	North Central Montana District	CORRAL
6 July 2017	Equipment and vehicle use	1.0 acres	Northeastern Land Office	not named
13 July 2020	Equipment and vehicle use	1.5 acres	North Central Montana District	HIGHWAY 244

Every fire recorded in Petroleum County

Storms near this property

39 since 1997

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Flatwillow, the town this property stands in, in 39 storm reports between 1997 and 2025: 27 hail, 6 thunderstorm wind, 4 flood, 1 funnel cloud. 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 2025	Hail	Flatwillow	-	Public reported hen egg size hail.
July 2025	Thunderstorm Wind	Flatwillow	-	A wind gust of 66 mph was measured at the Mosby South HydroMet site (Montana Climate Office network).
June 2023	Flash Flood	Flatwillow	-	Law enforcement reported water flowing over the roadway on U.S. Highway 87 at mile marker 22.
June 2021	Hail	Flatwillow	-	Public reported, via Facebook, quarter size hail located off of US Highway 87, five miles north of the Musselshell County line. Time estimated from radar.
August 2019	Hail	Flatwillow	-	Public reported hail up to the size of golf balls.
August 2019	Hail	Flatwillow	-	Trained spotter reported quarter size hail, along with heavy rain and trees bending in the wind.
June 2019	Hail	Flatwillow	-	Public reported golf ball size hail. Time estimated from radar.
June 2019	Hail	Flatwillow	-	Petroleum County DES Coordinator estimated hail up to the size of quarters still on the road, twenty minutes after the storm passed.
April 2017	Hail	Flatwillow	-	Public reported nickel to quarter sized hail.
July 2017	Hail	Flatwillow	-	A trained spotter reported penny sized hail in addition to heavy rainfall and wind gusts up to approximately 50 mph.
June 2016	Hail	Flatwillow	-	Public reported quarter sized hail.
June 2016	Hail	Flatwillow	-	Trained spotter reported half dollar hail covering the ground.
July 2013	Hail	Flatwillow	-	Public reported mostly pea-sized hail mixed with some quarter and half-dollar sized hail. Brief, heavy rain.
July 2012	Hail	Flatwillow	-	Spotter estimated quarter-sized hail stones.
July 2011	Hail	Flatwillow	-	Spotter reported that quarter-sized hail covered the ground.
June 2011	Flood	Flatwillow	-	The Musselshell River remained out of its banks through much of June as heavy rainfalls downstream caused significant flash flooding. Flatwillow Creek was a major tributary to the flooding, with McDonald and Box Elder Creeks contributing lesser amounts.
June 2011	Hail	Flatwillow	-	Mostly pea-sized hail with a few hail stones up to the size of quarters.
May 2011	Flood	Flatwillow	-	Rainfall filled up Box Elder, Flatwillow and McDonalds creeks. Several homes in and around Winnett were flooded and roads such as the Dovetail, Valentine, Mosby, East Bench, Petrolia Bench, Old 79 Trail and access roads to the Crooked Creek Marina were washed out, flooded or impassible.
May 2011	Flood	Flatwillow	-	High river levels continued on the Musselshell River and its tributaries. The gauge at Mosby crested at 1843 MST on May 11th at 13.98 feet. This is almost 6 feet above Flood Stage.
May 2011	Flood	Flatwillow	-	The Musselshell River at Mosby reached close to 16 feet on May 23rd (the second highest stage ever), 8 feet above flood stage. A bridge near the junction of Box Elder and McDonald Creeks had 6 of water flowing over it. Most of these creeks remained high or out of their banks until the end of June.
August 2010	Thunderstorm Wind	Flatwillow	-	Around 70 mph wind blew over a large wooden shed and pushed it 500 feet away from it's foundation. The shed was 48 feet x 18 feet. It was 50 years old but still in good shape and was of solid construction.
August 1997	Hail	Flatwillow	-	Wheat crops in around the community of Scobey were completely flattened by severe thunderstorm winds and large hail.
July 2011	Hail	Flatwillow	-	no account filed
June 2011	Hail	Flatwillow	-	no account filed
May 2007	Hail	Flatwillow	-	no account filed
August 2006	Thunderstorm Wind	Flatwillow	-	no account filed
August 2004	Funnel Cloud	Flatwillow	-	no account filed
May 2002	Thunderstorm Wind	Flatwillow	-	no account filed
July 2002	Hail	Flatwillow	-	no account filed
July 2002	Thunderstorm Wind	Flatwillow	-	no account filed
June 2001	Hail	Flatwillow	-	no account filed
July 2000	Hail	Flatwillow	-	no account filed
July 2000	Hail	Flatwillow	-	no account filed
July 2000	Hail	Flatwillow	-	no account filed
July 2000	Thunderstorm Wind	Flatwillow	-	no account filed
July 2000	Hail	Flatwillow	-	no account filed
July 2000	Hail	Flatwillow	-	no account filed
July 1999	Hail	Flatwillow	-	no account filed
July 1998	Hail	Flatwillow	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Petroleum 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.

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 100005396 in Record Group 79.
Petroleum County	All 5 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.