Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2020. 10 historic topographic surveys show this location, the earliest from 1904.
From the record
“Bell House is a historic house at 66 Railroad Avenue approximately 1/10th mile south of the Long Island rail road in Center Moriches, Long Island, New York. Built in 1872 by Selah Smith of Huntington who purchased the land, it is significant in the area of ethnic history for the Smith and Bell families and the African-American AME Zion community of Center Moriches during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”
Wikipedia article Mary E. Bell House, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 338 National Register listings published here for Suffolk County · listed in 2020 · category: Building.
National Register reference number. 100005831 - assigned by the National Park Service when the property was listed.
Fires near this property
705 since 1992
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 705 fires within 5 miles of Mary E. Bell House (Additional Documentation)
between 1992 and 2020, burning about 459 acres in total. 50 started naturally. 116 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
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
472
Arson/incendiarism
116
Natural
50
Equipment and vehicle use
35
Smoking
14
Recreation and ceremony
7
Power generation/transmission/distribution
4
Debris and open burning
3
Misuse of fire by a minor
2
Railroad operations and maintenance
1
Other causes
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 National Weather Service names
Center Moriches, the town this property stands in, in 4 storm reports between 2008 and 2022: 3 thunderstorm wind, 1 hail.
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.
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.
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.
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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