Wallace W. Waterman Sod House

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995.

From the record

“Waterman Sod House near Big Springs, Nebraska, United States, is a sod house built in 1886. It was modified in 1925 for continued use, including a layer of concrete being applied to the exterior walls.”
Wikipedia article Wallace W. Waterman Sod House, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 5 National Register listings published here for Deuel County · listed in 1995 · 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 2 buildingss as contributing to the listing.
Listed as. Waterman, Wallace W., Sod House - the National Register files a house under its owner's surname.
Address. Day Rd., 9 mi. N of Big Springs, Big Springs, 69122
When was it listed? February 1995
Category. building
Precinct. Big Springs precinct
Architectural style. rustic architecture
National Register reference number. 95000096 - 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

2 since 2012

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 2 fires within 5 miles of Wallace W. Waterman Sod House between 2012 and 2016, burning about 251 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	1
Natural	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
11 July 2016	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Nebraska Forest Service	not named
14 June 2012	Natural	250 acres	Crescent Lake National Wildlife Refuge	ASH HOLLOW ASSIST

Every fire recorded in Deuel County

Storms near this property

3 since 1994

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Big Springs, the town this property stands in, in 3 storm reports between 1994 and 1996: 2 hail, 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
July 1996	Hail	Big Springs	-	no account filed
July 1996	Hail	Big Springs	-	no account filed
July 1994	Thunderstorm Wind	Big Springs	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Deuel 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

1 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.

Photograph	Property	Distance	Listed
	Menter Farmstead	7.3 miles	2011

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 95000096 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Deuel 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.