Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.
From the record
“Gray Court-Owings School is a historic school building located at Gray Court, Laurens County, South Carolina. The building consists of a two-story central brick building constructed in 1914, with a flanking one-story brick-veneered high school building and a one-story brick-veneered auditorium, both built in 1928.”
Wikipedia article Gray Court-Owings School, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 26 National Register listings published here for Laurens County · listed in 2004 · category: Building.
National Register reference number.04000354- 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
160 since 1992
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 160 fires within 5 miles of Gray Court-Owings School
between 1992 and 2019, burning about 473 acres in total. 3 started naturally. 13 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
59
Debris and open burning
53
Arson/incendiarism
13
Misuse of fire by a minor
11
Equipment and vehicle use
10
Railroad operations and maintenance
5
Natural
3
Power generation/transmission/distribution
3
Smoking
2
Recreation and ceremony
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 federal mineral resources record lists
3 workings within 5 miles of Gray Court-Owings School: 2 producers, 1 unknown.
2 still produce. What was taken out: Granite, Stone, Crushed/Broken, Stone, Crushed/Broken. 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
Gray Court, the town this property stands in, in 48 storm reports between 1994 and 2025: 26 thunderstorm wind, 19 hail, 2 flash flood, 1 lightning.
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.
County comms numerous trees, power lines, and power poles blown down or snapped across the county, with some trees on homes and automobiles, including one in the city of Laurens and in Clinton. An automated sensor measured a gust of 59 kts, or 65 mph at the Laurens County Airport, 4 miles east of the city. A hangar was damaged at the airport and a large tree limb fell on and damaged construction equipment. At the nearby Laurens County Park, the roof was blown off a shed and baseball dugouts. In addition, a retaining wall was blown over outside the stadium at Clinton High School.
Severe thunderstorms developed just south of the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport and moved south across eastern Greenville County and western Spartanburg County along and either side of the Enoree River. A number of trees were blown down, mobile homes were damaged, and some porches, outbuildings, and roofs were damaged by the wind. A fire station was damaged by the wind. In Greenvilloe County there was a large area of macroburst with pockets of more intense microbursts evident. The storms moved into and across northern Laurens County where numerous trees were blown down.
Public reported (via social media) a couple of trees blown down in the Gray Court area. Utility company reported trees down on power lines east of Fountain Inn.
County comms and spotter reported at least nine trees and several power lines blown down across the Gray Court area, including two large trees down on Georgia Rd.
Hail up to the size of golf balls covered the ground about 2 miles southwest of Gray Court. Other reports of penny to quarter size hail were received over to the Gray Court town limits.
A tree was blown down in the downtown area. A tree was also downed on Ora Road, and a couple of trees were reported down in Laurens at around the same time.
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
2 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.
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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