R.J. Hill Building

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.

From the record

“Hill Building is a historic commercial building in the small city of Palacios, Texas, which is located on the Gulf coast of Texas. The building was built in 1910 out of cast concrete blocks that were manufactured at the site, at a time that the town "was being promoted as a seaside resort".”
Wikipedia article R. J. Hill Building, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 14 National Register listings published here for Matagorda County · listed in 2009 · category: Building.

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 1 building as contributing to the listing.
Listed as. Hill, R.J., Building - the National Register files a house under its owner's surname.
Address. 401 Commerce St., Palacios, 77465
When was it listed? October 2009
Category. building
Census division. Palacios
Architectural style. Richardsonian Romanesque, Romanesque Revival architecture
National Register reference number. 09000840 - 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

31 since 2017

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 31 fires within 5 miles of R.J. Hill Building between 2017 and 2018, burning about 342 acres in total. 1 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
Debris and open burning	21
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	6
Equipment and vehicle use	2
Natural	1
Power generation/transmission/distribution	1

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
9 September 2017	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Texas A & M Forest Service	CR 305 FIRE
7 September 2017	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Texas A & M Forest Service	12TH GRASS FIRE
6 September 2017	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Texas A & M Forest Service	MOORE GRASS FIRE
3 September 2017	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Texas A & M Forest Service	E.BAYSHORE & CR 305
3 September 2017	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Texas A & M Forest Service	CR 305 & E. BAYSHORE
17 September 2017	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Texas A & M Forest Service	NEWSOME FIRE
10 September 2017	Debris and open burning	5.0 acres	Texas A & M Forest Service	PERRYMAN FIRE
7 August 2018	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Texas A & M Forest Service	PRECINCT 3 BRUSH FIRE

Every fire recorded in Matagorda County

Storms near this property

8 since 1996

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Palacios, the town this property stands in, in 8 storm reports between 1996 and 2021: 3 thunderstorm wind, 2 flash flood, 1 funnel cloud, 1 tornado. The reports record 1 injury. 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.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
December 2002	Thunderstorm Wind	Palacios	1 hurt, $150,000	TV tower fell on trailor.
July 2003	Tornado (F1)	Palacios	$150,000	Tornado in the eye wall of Hurricane Claudette damaged a couple buildings at the Baptist Youth Camp in Palacios.
August 2002	Thunderstorm Wind	Palacios	$10,000	Power lines down in Palacios.
November 2004	Flash Flood	Palacios	$4,000	Flooding in Palacios.
May 2021	Flash Flood	Palacios	-	SH 35 Business in Palacios was impassable due to floodwaters and was closed.
November 2004	Hail	Palacios	-	no account filed
May 2001	Funnel Cloud	Palacios	-	no account filed
September 1996	Thunderstorm Wind	Palacios	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Matagorda 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

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.

Property	Distance	Listed
Luther Hotel	under 500 feet	2010
Price-Farwell House	under 500 feet	2009
Palacios Colored School	0.6 miles	2025

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 09000840 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Matagorda County	All 14 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.
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.