Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.
From the record
“The Naomi Institute, also known as the Rock Bluff School, is located in the ghost town of Rock Bluff, Nebraska, three miles east of Murray. It was one of the earliest higher education institutions in Nebraska, founded in 1870 as a pioneer college.”
Wikipedia article Naomi Institute, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 26 National Register listings published here for Cass County · listed in 1977 · category: Building.
National Register reference number.77000825- 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
23 since 2008
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 23 fires within 5 miles of Naomi Institute
between 2008 and 2020, burning about 265 acres in total. 1 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
11
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
7
Equipment and vehicle use
3
Natural
1
Smoking
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 Naomi Institute: 4 past producers, 1 producer.
1 still produces. What was taken out: Stone, Crushed/Broken, 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
Murray, the town this property stands in, in 34 storm reports between 1995 and 2025: 17 hail, 13 thunderstorm wind, 3 tornado, 1 flash 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.
The 911 Call Center relayed a report of a large dust cloud on the leading edge of the thunderstorm with an embedded gustnado. There was widespread tree damage in the area as well.
Three witnesses observed tornado form south side of lake. Roof taken off residence. Several hardwood trees snapped and pine trees uprooted or snapped. Tornado continued northeast where it did substantial damage to a horse farm. Extension of house destroyed. Horse trailer rolled. Several large trees snapped an uprooted. Unable to survey northern end of track due to terrain and no road.
A trained spotter estimated that thunderstorm winds gusted to 70 mph in town. The winds downed some trees, and caused scattered roof and window damage.
This tornado damaged cabins and homes and downed trees near the Lake Waconda area by Murray. The tornado was on the ground for about 1 mile, and it was produced from the same supercell complex that spawned 2 earlier tornadoes in Cass county and also the long tracked f4 tornado that caused extensive damage in the Hallam area.
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
6 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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