Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1980. 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
one of 22 National Register listings in Ross County · listed in 1980 · category: Building.
National Register reference number.80003215- 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
37 since 2005
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 37 fires within 5 miles of Highbank Farm between
2005 and 2020, burning about 128 acres in total. None started naturally. 2 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
Debris and open burning
19
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
12
Arson/incendiarism
2
Equipment and vehicle use
2
Recreation and ceremony
1
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 2,031 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Highbank Farm between 1874 and
1975: 1,541 Animalia, 398 Fungi, 81 Plantae, 7 Protozoa, 3 Unrecorded, 1 Chromista. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A. C. Kinsey, A. C. Lincoln, A. Cronquist 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
1 working within 5 miles of Highbank Farm: 1 producer.
All of them still produce. 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.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Chillicothe, the town this property stands in, in 92 storm reports between 1995 and 2025: 56 thunderstorm wind, 24 hail, 6 flood, 3 lightning.
The reports record 1 death and 6 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.
Problems with high water occurred across the county. A roof of a gas station on the west side of Chillicothe collapsed under the weight of the heavy rain.
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
1,642 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
The Highbank Farm sits atop a low rise overlooking the west side of the Scioto River Valley floodplain. The nomination includes the farmhouse, and a 19th century I-beam bridge. Some mid-20th century farm outbuildings lie to the west of the nominated property, but are not included because of the late dates of construction. A 3-bay frame shed with a central breeseway and horizontal siding is attached to the rear of the house. railings composed of small vertical I-beams connected by horizontal metal rods. Larger Condition ruins L shaped, laid in American bond, and has a two-story projecting bay on the base of the 7.
Description The I-beam bridge crosses Dry Run and sits on concrete abutments.It features side L.The facade features a stone water table and tall narrow openings with stone lintels dormers and chimneys on the side elevations. Dry Run gulley to the east which provides part of the visual setting of the property. I-beams have been placed across the structure which presently carry the load of crossing building;a rear wing; and an irregular shaped front block added in 1884. Check one _ excellent and sills. The shingle covered roof is both gabled and hipped and there are several traffic. The date of the structure is unknown.
Included within the boundaries is the sloping grassy landscape between the house and The house is a rectangular two-story brick structure composed of three basic components: an early 19th century rectalinear block which now forms the central portion of the deteriorated gable roof and the walls are constructed in American bond. The windows have stone lintels -unexposed The early 19th century core isconstructed of English bond brick walls and has a shingled Areas of SignificanceCheck and justify below _ archeology-historic - science _ agriculture _literature .
(in one paragraph) in the Ohio Valley. The Scioto Valley in the vicinity of Chillicothe was second only Cattle were purchased from outside the valley, sometimes from Missouri or Illinois of the Scioto Valley dealors had their antecedents, and driven to the valley. Here the cattle were fattened for several years in stalls or feedlots and then driven to the populous East Coast (usually Philadelphia or Baltimore) for butchering. By the late 1840s Valley cattlemen, most notably the Renick Brothers and Edwin Harness, of Highbanks Farm, beef cattle from England aimed directly at meeting the needs of the Eastern market for in this vital Scioto Valley cattle trade following their acquisition of the property.
Highbank Farm was settled by Joseph Harness in 1802, a native of the South Branch of the duplicates are inconclusive but clearly indicate the presence of a brick house by the Company for Importing English Cattle" in 1833. Edwin was one of the three men chosen by the company to select the cattle in England for importation and he utilized Highbank Farm for his own selective breeding following the auction of the imported shorthorns in Edwin ascended to the leadership of the Scioto Valley cattle industry following Renick's death in 1848. James I. Vause, also from Hardy County, married Eliza Harness, Edwin's sister, and moved into the house on Highbank Farm in the 1820s.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 80003215, 12 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
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.
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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