Fort Atkinson

A National Historic Landmark. Built in 1971. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.

From the record

“Fort Atkinson was the first United States Army post to be established west of the Missouri River in the unorganized region of the Louisiana Purchase of the United States. Located just east of present-day Fort Calhoun, Nebraska, the fort was erected in 1819 and abandoned in 1827.”
Wikipedia article Fort Atkinson (Nebraska), CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 14 National Register listings published here for Washington County · listed in 1966 · category: Site · built in 1971 · a National Historic Landmark.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

Address. 1 mi. E of Fort Calhoun, Fort Calhoun, 68023
When was it listed? October 1966
Category. site
Township. Township 1
When was it built? 1971
National Register reference number. 66000454 - 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

35 since 2001

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 35 fires within 5 miles of Fort Atkinson between 2001 and 2020, burning about 249 acres in total. 3 started naturally. 1 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	19
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	6
Natural	3
Equipment and vehicle use	2
Recreation and ceremony	2
Power generation/transmission/distribution	1
Arson/incendiarism	1
Smoking	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
12 September 2018	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Nebraska Forest Service	not named
16 August 2008	Debris and open burning	3.0 acres	Nebraska Forest Service	not named
18 July 2020	Smoking	under an acre	Nebraska Forest Service	not named
8 June 2018	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Nebraska Forest Service	not named
6 June 2018	Natural	under an acre	Nebraska Forest Service	not named
9 April 2019	Debris and open burning	3.0 acres	Nebraska Forest Service	not named
9 April 2016	Recreation and ceremony	1.0 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	MOVANEY FIRE
7 April 2008	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Nebraska Forest Service	not named

Every fire recorded in Washington County

Storms near this property

1 since 1994

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Fort Calhoun, the town this property stands in, in 1 storm report in 1994: 1 thunderstorm wind. 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
April 1994	Thunderstorm Wind	Fort Calhoun	-	Thunderstorm winds estimated at 65 to 70 mph occurred at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant.

Every storm recorded in Washington 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

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.

Property	Distance	Listed
Alfred H. and Sarah Frahm House	0.7 miles	2006
Long Creek School	3.8 miles	2001
Bertrand Site	4.7 miles	1969

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 66000454 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Washington 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.