Tres Piedras Railroad Water Tower

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

From the record

One of 40 National Register listings published here for Taos County · listed in 1979 · category: Structure.

Sources: 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 structure as contributing to the listing.
Address. Off U.S. 285, Tres Piedras, 87577
When was it listed? February 1979
Category. structure
Census division. Tres Piedras
National Register reference number. 79001560 - 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

84 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 84 fires within 5 miles of Tres Piedras Railroad Water Tower between 1992 and 2020, burning about 116 acres in total. 52 started naturally. 8 were 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	52
Debris and open burning	8
Arson/incendiarism	8
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	5
Recreation and ceremony	5
Equipment and vehicle use	2
Smoking	2
Power generation/transmission/distribution	1
Misuse of fire by a minor	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 September 1997	Natural	under an acre	Carson National Forest	PIEDRAS
7 September 2004	Arson/incendiarism	1.0 acres	Carson National Forest	TP WELL 1&2
7 September 1993	Natural	under an acre	Carson National Forest	not named
6 September 2018	Natural	under an acre	Carson National Forest	ROAD TANK
24 September 2004	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	Carson National Forest	BONE YARD
24 September 1993	Natural	under an acre	Carson National Forest	not named
22 September 2005	Natural	under an acre	Carson National Forest	SNAG
6 August 2019	Natural	under an acre	Carson National Forest	LARGO

Every fire recorded in Taos County

Mines and quarries near this property

4 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 4 workings within 5 miles of Tres Piedras Railroad Water Tower: 4 past producers. None of them still produces. What was taken out: 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.

Site	Commodity	Status
Materials Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Materials Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Materials Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Unnamed Gravel Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer

Every working recorded in Taos County

Storms near this property

4 since 1997

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Tres Piedras, the town this property stands in, in 4 storm reports between 1997 and 2009: 3 hail, 1 tornado. 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 2009	Tornado (EF0)	Tres Piedras	$10,000	A brief tornado, likely a landspout, occurred two miles south of the Highway 64 and 285 intersection. The tornado tore the roof off a barn and ripped up some fencing.
May 2009	Hail	Tres Piedras	-	no account filed
May 1997	Hail	Tres Piedras	-	no account filed
May 1997	Hail	Tres Piedras	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Taos 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
	Tres Piedras Administrative Site, Old	0.5 miles	1993

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 79001560 in Record Group 79.
Taos County	All 40 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.
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.