Sparks Hall

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

From the record

“Sparks Hall, also known as Women's Dormitory on the campus of Chadron State College in Chadron, Nebraska, was built in 1914 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.”
Wikipedia article Sparks Hall, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 14 National Register listings published here for Dawes County · listed in 1983 · category: Building.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · 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. 10th and Main Sts., Chadron, 69337
When was it listed? September 1983
Category. building
Also known as. Chadron State College Historic Buildings TR
Precinct. Precinct 04
Architectural style. Colonial Revival architecture
Architect. Alfred W. Woods
National Register reference number. 83001086 - 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

24 since 1995

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 24 fires within 5 miles of Sparks Hall between 1995 and 2020, burning about 1,086 acres in total. 16 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	16
Equipment and vehicle use	3
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	2
Firearms and explosives use	1
Recreation and ceremony	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
10 September 2000	Natural	4.0 acres	Nebraska National Forest	SPOTTED TAIL
6 August 2014	Natural	under an acre	Nebraska National Forest	NO NAME
28 August 2020	Natural	391 acres	Nebraska National Forest	ARISTOCRAT
27 August 2010	Equipment and vehicle use	407 acres	Nebraska National Forest	ARISTROCRAT
27 August 1999	Natural	1.0 acres	Nebraska National Forest	PINE KNOB
2 August 2020	Firearms and explosives use	3.7 acres	Nebraska National Forest	SPOTTED TAIL
2 August 2017	Natural	4.4 acres	Nebraska Forest Service	not named
12 August 2013	Natural	20 acres	Nebraska National Forest	SOUTH ARISTOCRAT

Every fire recorded in Dawes County

Storms near this property

60 of 174 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Chadron, the town this property stands in, in 174 storm reports between 1993 and 2025: 115 hail, 40 thunderstorm wind, 6 tornado, 3 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.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
July 2010	Thunderstorm Wind	Chadron	$300,000	Hail damage to many cars, shattered windows at Walmart parking lot. Many business signs were blown out or had holes in them from the hail. Many street signs and several power lines were down. Three trailer homes sustained major damage. One was flipped on its roof and the other two were blown to pieces into a nearby field. Orange construction barriers tossed 0.75 miles from the highway.
July 2010	Hail	Chadron	$200,000	Many business signs with holes in them. Windows shattered in the Walmart parking lot. Hail damage to many cars.
July 1994	Hail	Chadron	$50,000	Large hail damaged a home, outbuildings, a car and crops.
July 2001	Hail	Chadron	$50,000	no account filed
August 1996	Lightning	Chadron	$50,000	no account filed
July 2004	Hail	Chadron	$20,000	2 inch diameter hail and tree limbs down at Chadron State Park.
August 1999	Hail	Chadron	$10,000	no account filed
August 1998	Hail	Chadron	$5,000	A storm produced golfball size hail in Chadron State Park.
June 1998	Hail	Chadron	$4,000	A strom produced ping pong ball size hail 10 miles southwest of Chadron.
May 1998	Hail	Chadron	$3,000	A storm produced quarter size hail at the Chadron State Park.
April 2025	Thunderstorm Wind	Chadron	-	Chadron Airport reported a wind gust of 58 MPH AT 8:57 PM.
June 2025	Thunderstorm Wind	Chadron	-	Report from Kings Canyon RAWS site.
July 2024	Thunderstorm Wind	Chadron	-	RAWS mesonet station Kings Canyon (HRSN1) measured wind gust 7 miles south of Chadron.
July 2023	Hail	Chadron	-	Quarter sized hail reported by spotter 4 miles east southeast of Chadron. Lasted one minute.
July 2023	Hail	Chadron	-	Report from public received on Facebook of ping pong ball sized hail north side of Chadron.
July 2023	Hail	Chadron	-	Quarter sized hail reported 1 mile west of Chadron.
June 2023	Hail	Chadron	-	Quarter sized hail was reported 3 miles S of Chadron.
June 2023	Hail	Chadron	-	Quarter sized hail was reported in the city of Chadron.
July 2023	Hail	Chadron	-	Hail reported by spotter 5 miles north northwest of Chadron. Quarters to half dollar size reported.
August 2023	Hail	Chadron	-	Trained spotter reported slightly larger than golf ball sized hail.
August 2023	Hail	Chadron	-	Social media picture of golf ball sized hail.
May 2021	Thunderstorm Wind	Chadron	-	Wind gust measured by the Chadron Airport sensor. In addition, a public observer submitted photo of overturned trailer from the winds about one mile west of the airport.
August 2021	Flood	Chadron	-	Media partner reported 1.5 to 2.0 inches of rainfall in downtown Chadron along with minor urban flooding due to thunderstorms.
August 2020	Thunderstorm Wind	Chadron	-	Measured wind gust reported at station HRSN1 Kings Canyon.
August 2020	Hail	Chadron	-	Observer estimated wind gust around 60 mph in addition to ping pong size hail. Damage to crop was noted but no dollar amount was discerned.
June 2020	Thunderstorm Wind	Chadron	-	RAWS station HRSN1 - Kings Canyon reported wind gust in Chadron State Park.
June 2019	Thunderstorm Wind	Chadron	-	Observer measured reported wind speed south of Chadron using handheld anemometer.
August 2019	Hail	Chadron	-	Spotter also measured on weather station equipment a thunderstorm wind gust of 56 mph.
August 2019	Thunderstorm Wind	Chadron	-	Dispatch with Dawes County received calls of multiple trees knocked over from thunderstorm winds. An estimated three foot diameter tree was blown snapping halfway up with the top half landing on top of a vehicle.
May 2018	Hail	Chadron	-	Quarter size hail was observed north of Chadron.
July 2018	Hail	Chadron	-	Quarter size hail covered the ground at the Box Butte Campground.
May 2017	Thunderstorm Wind	Chadron	-	Estimated wind gusts as high as 65 mph were observed north of Chadron.
June 2017	Hail	Chadron	-	Penny to quarter size hail covered the ground north of Chadron.
April 2017	Hail	Chadron	-	Quarter size hail was observed at Chadron State Park.
April 2017	Hail	Chadron	-	Quarter size hail was observed five miles northeast of Chadron.
August 2017	Hail	Chadron	-	Half dollar size hail was observed north of Chadron.
August 2017	Funnel Cloud	Chadron	-	Several funnel clouds were sighted north of Chadron.
August 2017	Hail	Chadron	-	Quarter size hail was observed southwest of Chadron.
August 2017	Hail	Chadron	-	Hen egg size hail was observed south of Chadron.
July 2017	Thunderstorm Wind	Chadron	-	Wind gusts were estimated between 55 and 60 mph at Chadron State Park.
July 2017	Hail	Chadron	-	Quarter size hail was observed near Whitney Lake.
July 2017	Hail	Chadron	-	Quarter size hail was observed near Box Butte Campground.
June 2016	Thunderstorm Wind	Chadron	-	Estimated wind gusts of 80 mph were reported 12 miles northwest of Chadron.
September 2016	Thunderstorm Wind	Chadron	-	Estimated wind gusts of 60 mph were reported at Red Cloud Campground.
June 2016	Hail	Chadron	-	Quarter size hail was reported 12 miles south of Chadron.
June 2016	Flash Flood	Chadron	-	One to two inches of rain in an hour produced flash flooding throughout Chadron. Many streets were inundated with one to two feet of water.
June 2016	Hail	Chadron	-	Golf ball size hail was reported four miles west of Chadron.
June 2016	Hail	Chadron	-	Golf ball size hail was reported three miles southwest of Chadron.
June 2016	Thunderstorm Wind	Chadron	-	An estimated wind gust of 60 mph was reported at Chadron.
June 2016	Thunderstorm Wind	Chadron	-	The King Canyon Canyon RAWS sensor south of Chadron measured a peak wind of 103 mph.
June 2016	Thunderstorm Wind	Chadron	-	An estimated wind gust of 70 mph was reported four miles west of Chadron. Tree branches were snapped off. Power lines were down. A couple of trailers were overturned at a mobile home park.
August 2016	Thunderstorm Wind	Chadron	-	Estimated wind gusts of 60 mph were reported 10 miles east of Chadron.
July 2016	Thunderstorm Wind	Chadron	-	The Kings Canyon RAWS wind sensor measured a peak gust of 59 mph.
July 2016	Hail	Chadron	-	Half dollar size hail was reported 15 miles southwest of Chadron.
July 2016	Hail	Chadron	-	Quarter size hail was reported three miles south-southeast of Chadron.
July 2016	Hail	Chadron	-	Quarter size hail was reported on Highway 20 about six miles east-southeast of Chadron.
July 2016	Thunderstorm Wind	Chadron	-	Estimated 60 mph wind gusts were reported nine miles northeast of Chadron.
July 2016	Hail	Chadron	-	Quarter size hail was reported four miles west of Chadron.
July 2016	Hail	Chadron	-	Marble to golf ball size hail was reported five miles east of Chadron.
July 2016	Thunderstorm Wind	Chadron	-	Estimated 65 mph wind gusts were reported five miles east of Chadron.

Every storm recorded in Dawes 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

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.

Property	Distance	Listed
Crites Hall	under 500 feet	1983
Edna Work Hall	0.1 miles	1983
Library	0.1 miles	1983
Chadron Public Library	0.5 miles	1990
Chadron Commercial Historic District	0.8 miles	2007
Hotel Chadron	0.9 miles	2002

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 83001086 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Dawes 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.