Mentz Church

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004. 10 historic topographic surveys show this location, the earliest from 1899.

From the record

“Mentz Church is a historic community church located at Montezuma in Cayuga County, New York, about seven miles northwest of the city of Auburn. The church was organized by an extended family of Scotch-Irish immigrant farmers, named Gilmore and Bell, who had been farming nearby since 1810.”
Wikipedia article Mentz Church, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 71 National Register listings published here for Cayuga County · listed in 2004 · 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, 1 site as contributing to the listing.
Address. Mentz Church Rd. at McDonald Rd., Montezuma, 13140
When was it listed? September 2004
Category. building
Town. Montezuma town
National Register reference number. 04001064 - 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

97 since 1994

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 97 fires within 5 miles of Mentz Church between 1994 and 2020, burning about 797 acres in total. 7 started naturally. 46 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
Arson/incendiarism	46
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	28
Debris and open burning	11
Natural	7
Smoking	2
Misuse of fire by a minor	1
Equipment and vehicle use	1
Railroad operations and maintenance	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 2007	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	Fire Department of New York	not named
20 September 2017	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	Fire Department of New York	N/A
17 September 2015	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	Fire Department of New York	N/A
13 September 2002	Arson/incendiarism	1.5 acres	Fire Department of New York	not named
6 August 2015	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	Fire Department of New York	N/A
6 August 2006	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	Fire Department of New York	not named
23 August 2006	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	Fire Department of New York	not named
18 August 2005	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Fire Department of New York	not named

Every fire recorded in Cayuga County

Storms near this property

7 since 1998

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Montezuma, the town this property stands in, in 7 storm reports between 1998 and 2019: 5 thunderstorm wind, 2 hail. The reports record 3 injuries. 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
September 1998	Thunderstorm Wind	Montezuma	3 hurt, $20,000,000	The derecho which inflicted wind damage upstream to the northwest, including Seneca county, ripped across northern and central parts of Cayuga county between 100 and 130 am EDT. Much wind damage resulted. Most of the damage was in the form of downed trees and power lines, but there was a concentrated area of structural damage from Port Byron southwestward to Montezuma. The line of severe thunderstorms first entered the county around 100 am EDT and affected an area from Montezuma to Throop to Port Byron between 100 and 110 am. It was in this region that the greatest damage occurred in the county. In the town of Port Byron, a 150 year old Presbyterian Church was nearly leveled by the ferocity of the wind. Portions of its steeple and bell tower were blown several hundred yards and actually caused some damage to adjacent structures. In Montezuma and Throop, many trees and utility poles were uprooted, with several landing on nearby cars and homes. Dozens of homes in this area sustained siding and/or roof damage. In the city of Auburn, the storm came through around 115 am EDT and felled numerous trees and power lines. On the north side of town, damage to homes was more pronounced with roofs torn off of several buidings, including a department store. A few minor injuries were caused by flying debris in this section of town. The storms exited the county shortly before 125 am EDT with more tree damage in the town of Owasco. Ten vacation homes in the Highland Beach area on the eastern side of Owasco Lake took on minor damage in the form of blown out windows, ripped off shingles, and damaged aluminum siding. Damage estimates were close to 20 million dollars for the county. Portions of Port Byron and Auburn in the hardest hit areas were without electrical power for close to 3 days. Cayuga county eventually qualified to receive federal disaster relief money.
May 2019	Thunderstorm Wind	Montezuma	$10,000	Strong thunderstorm winds knocked down a large tree, which ripped the wires and box off of a house.
July 2010	Thunderstorm Wind	Montezuma	$3,000	Many trees were blown down from Montezuma to Throop. The event occurred from 12:50 pm to 1:05 pm.
June 2008	Thunderstorm Wind	Montezuma	$1,000	A few trees were blown down.
June 2014	Thunderstorm Wind	Montezuma	-	A large tree was blown down.
July 2010	Hail	Montezuma	-	no account filed
June 2008	Hail	Montezuma	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Cayuga County

Maps showing this location

10 surveys

United States Geological Survey topographic sheets whose coverage includes this point. Matched by taking the coordinate the National Park Service records for this property, then testing that coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet.

1899 USGS Auburn quadrangle1:62500
1902 USGS Auburn quadrangle1:62500 - 9 printings
1943 USGS Cayuga quadrangle1:31680
1950 USGS Elmira quadrangle1:250000 - 2 printings
1954 USGS Cayuga quadrangle1:24000 - 2 printings
1956 USGS Auburn quadrangle1:62500 - 2 printings
1958 USGS Elmira quadrangle1:250000 - 2 printings
1962 USGS Elmira quadrangle1:250000 - 4 printings
1965 USGS Elmira quadrangle1:250000
1986 USGS Auburn quadrangle1:100000 - 2 printings

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
Seneca River Crossing Canals Historic District	2.0 miles	2005
Erie Canal Lock 52 Complex	3.4 miles	1998
Centreport Aqueduct	5.9 miles	2000
Hutchinson Homestead	6.3 miles	2009
Wall Street Methodist Episcopal Church	6.6 miles	1999
Orrin W. Burritt House	6.7 miles	2007

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 04001064 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Cayuga County	All 71 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.