Vessey School

Built in 1920. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.

From the record

“The Vessey School, on County Road 859 in Harding County, South Dakota, near Haley, North Dakota, was built around 1920. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.”
Wikipedia article Vessey School, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 13 National Register listings published here for Harding County · listed in 1987 · category: Building · built in 1920.

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 2 buildingss as contributing to the listing.
Address. CR 859, Haley, 58653
When was it listed? April 1987
Category. building
Also known as. Harding and Perkins Counties MRA
Unorganized territory. North Harding
When was it built? 1920
National Register reference number. 87000553 - 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

2 since 2009

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 2 fires within 5 miles of Vessey School between 2009 and 2016, burning about 13 acres in total. None started naturally. None was 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	2

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
18 August 2009	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	12 acres	South Dakota Wildland Fire Suppression	not named
29 June 2016	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	South Dakota Wildland Fire Suppression	VESSEY LAKE

Every fire recorded in Harding County

Mines and quarries near this property

1 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 1 working within 5 miles of Vessey School: 1 occurrence. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Lignite, Natural Gas, Sand and Gravel, Construction, Petroleum (Oil). Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Where	Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
	Ralph Quad	Lignite, Natural Gas, Sand and Gravel, Construction, Petroleum (Oil)	Occurrence

Every working recorded in Harding County

Map coverage status

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

1 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.

Photograph	Property	Distance	Listed
	Emmanuel Lutheran Church and Cemetery	5.9 miles	1987

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 87000553 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Harding County	All 13 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.
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.