Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1978. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“The Dew House is a three-story brick hotel building located on the Public Square in Nelsonville, Athens County, Ohio. Constructed originally in 1839 and expanded significantly in 1878, the building played a central role in the economic, social, and political history of Nelsonville during the 19th and early 20th centuries.”
Wikipedia article Dew House (Nelsonville, Ohio), CC BY-SA 4.0.
one of 19 National Register listings in Athens County · listed in 1978 · category: Building · one of 1 National Historic Landmarks in Athens County.
National Register reference number.78002006- 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
153 since 1993
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 153 fires within 5 miles of Dew House between
1993 and 2020, burning about 276 acres in total. 2 started naturally. 4 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
Recreation and ceremony
76
Debris and open burning
37
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
10
Equipment and vehicle use
9
Power generation/transmission/distribution
8
Other causes
6
Arson/incendiarism
4
Natural
2
Smoking
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. Museums hold 236 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Dew House between 1898 and
1975: 178 Animalia, 30 Plantae, 27 Fungi, 1 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A. D. Selby, Campbell, L. W. (Louis W.), Clifford M Wetmore and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
8 workings within 5 miles of Dew House: 5 past producers, 3 producers.
3 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Clay, Coal. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Nelsonville, the town this property stands in, in 41 storm reports between 1994 and 2025: 18 thunderstorm wind, 14 hail, 5 flash flood, 3 flood.
The reports record 1 death. 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.
Small streams across the northern portion of the county flooded. ||An elderly couple was driving home along Linscott Run. This is a small tributary to Federal Creek near Amesville. Close to home, the husband decided to stop his vehicle and wait out some high water. Their vehicle became surrounded by rising water. The couple made an attempt to walk to nearby higher ground. The wife was using a walker due to recent hip surgery. She slipped and the husband could not hold on to her. The current swept her away. The fire department located her body around dawn on the 5th, about a half mile downstream. The husband was helped to safety by neighbors using a garden hose. Route 550 was also flooded in Amesville. ||Several streets in Nelsonville were flooded including along Dorr Run and Pleasant View Road. Large dump rocks, used in the bypass construction, were even moved by the water. A wall to a garage was knocked over by the water. A house foundation was damaged.||A vehicle was flooded along Margaret Creek near Albany. The occupants were unhurt at a nearby home when the local fire department arrived.
Numerous trees or large branches fell across the county. Nearly 24,000 customers lost electricity. Damage assessment included 1 home destroyed, 4 with major damage, and 3 with minor damage across the county. The public infrastructure damage assessment was around $580,000.
Numerous small streams overflowed and blocked roads during the daylight hours on the 19th. The Hocking River then caused flooding into the 21st. Damage was mainly to roads and a few culverts.
Rain amounts of 2 to 2.5 inches fell in about 2 hours. A spotter reported 1.6 inches in an hour. The 24 hour rain total was 3.5 inches at Nelsonville. The town of Athens was just south of the heaviest rain with a 24 hour rain total of 1.8 inches. Small streams flooded and closed several roads. The stream gauge at Doanville on the lower reaches of Monday Creek rose 10 to 11 feet in a few hours.
Rains of 2 to 3.5 inches fell in less than 3 hours, in a northwest to southeast corridor, along the Hocking River Valley. An automatic gauge south of Nelsonville measured 3.5 inches of rain. In the city of Athens, 3.4 inches of rain was recorded. The Plains measured 3.1 inches. Streams flooded roads in such communities as Athens, The Plains, and Chauncey. The York Fire Department went to the aid of motorists stalled in water along township roads. No flooding of dwellings was known.
Around 1.5 inches of rain fell in less than an hour with the second cluster of storms, causing minor flash flooding. Several streets were flooded, but no dwellings were affected.
Several roads were flooded in Doanville, including Lang Road, Brady Road and Pancake Road due to high water on Monday Creek.||Monday Creek at Doanville rose above its bankfull level of 14 feet very early on the 4th. It crested at 16.3 feet, just above its 16 foot moderate stage that afternoon, and returned to its banks just before noon on the 5th.
Multiple roads were closed across Athens County due to high water. This included State Routes 13 and 685 near Glouster, and State Route 690 near Amesville.||Monday Creek also flooded at Doanville, where the gage showed the creek spilled from its banks just before noon on the 22nd. The creek crested around 18.6 feet, or about 2.5 feet above its 16 foot bankfull level, late that night. It then returned to its banks by 4 PM on the 23rd.
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.
From the nomination file
1,731 words on record
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Description of the property
to the north. The Ohio House, which occupied the site immediately prior to the Dew House, was con- corporated into the Dew House, built in 1878. A third story was added to the original regular, U-shaped building was created with an interior courtyard area.
CONDITION EXCELLENT block and a three-story seven-bay extension was erected on the rear.In addition, a CHECK ONE RUINS UNALTERED The second story of the porch is supported by simple circular:steel posts and the roof two-story, four-bay block was attached to the northeastern side of the building.An ir- The first-story windows and double-door entrance in the original block have lintels GOOD basement.Differences in wall thickness seem to indicate that this building was in- The hipped roof with deck has a slate covering and a projecting cornice supported by hotel and commercial block have segmental arches with 2/2 sashes. The Dew House is a three-story brick building with a two-story commercial block added XFAIR and railing extend from the roof of the porch across the facade of the hotel.
structed in 1839, and consisted of a two-story masonry building with a full sandstone XALTERED _UNEXPOSED Sometime between 1907 and 1912,a two-story porch was added to the facade of the hotel. XORIGINAL SITE small brackets spaced between oversized paired brackets. narrow, vertical, tongue-and-groove siding. A simple, undecorated fire escape stairs by similar wooden posts.T decorated with a star and curvilinear pattern.The remainder of the windows in the AREAS OF
Statement of significance
The Dew House is an important manifestation of the economic, social, and political history Mineral City" of the entire three-county area. Both the Hocking Valley Canal, constructed in the 1830s, and the Hocking Valley Railroad, built in the 1870s, were designed to pro- the community in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The mineral resources around Nelsonville, which was platted in 1818 by Daniel Nelson, were justify a larger-scale mining. Thomas Dew, a local farmer, envisioned the potential town in 1835. The two-story hotel, called the Ohio House, was constructed on these lots Nelsonville, came with the completion of the Columbus and Hocking Valley Railroad in 1872. James Dew, a nephew of the original builder, recognized this and with a share of his requirements.
ART ARCHITECTURE PERIOD SIGNIFICANCE BUILDER/ARCHITECT RELIGION 1900- TRANSPORTATION CONSERVATION XPOLITICS/GOVERNMENT AGRICULTURE SCIENCE LITERATURE 1600-1699 SCULPTURE ENGINEERING INDUSTRY XECONOMICS EXPLORATION/SETTLEMENT _COMMUNICATIONS _1400-1499 coincide with the economic and physical expansion of Nelsonville that accompanied the _1700-1799 Dew House.Most noteworthy were the speeches of William Howard Taft and his rival former- supposedly incorporated into the new three-story building. Dew rented the hotel out until The town population, in fact, increased over 200% in the decade between 1870 and 1880. President Theodore Roosevelt from the second story of the hotel porch during the 1912 in 1839.
The greatest stimulus for coal mining in the region and consequently, the growth of The Dew House was an important focus of social and political activities in Nelsonville welfare housing, and was ultimately closed in 1975 in lieu of complying with fire code growth of Nelsonville that the canal would bring and purchased several corner lots in primary race for the Republican nomination. trustee for York Township.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 78002006, 13 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
3 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.
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.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
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.
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