Wallace E. Pratt House

Built in 1943 (International Style). Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2011.

From the record

“Pratt House, also known as Ship on the Desert, was the residence of Wallace Pratt in what is now Guadalupe Mountains National Park in far western Texas. Pratt, a petroleum geologist for the Humble Oil & Refining Company, had previously built the Wallace Pratt Lodge in McKittrick Canyon a couple of miles to the north in the Guadalupe Mountains.”
Wikipedia article Wallace E. Pratt House, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 6 National Register listings published here for Culberson County · listed in 2011 · category: Building · built in 1943, International Style, by Newton P. Bevin.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

Listed as. Pratt, Wallace E., House - the National Register files a house under its owner's surname.
Address. Pratt Dr. at McKittrick Rd., Salt Flat, 79847
When was it listed? December 2011
Category. building
Census division. Van Horn Rural
When was it built? 1943
Architectural style. International Style
Architect. Newton P. Bevin
National Register reference number. 11000927 - 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

51 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 51 fires within 5 miles of Wallace E. Pratt House between 1992 and 2020, burning about 694 acres in total. 35 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
Natural	35
Equipment and vehicle use	9
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	5
Smoking	1
Debris and open burning	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
8 July 1998	Natural	under an acre	Guadalupe Mountains National Park	LAMAR
8 July 1993	Natural	under an acre	Guadalupe Mountains National Park	RIDGE
5 July 2000	Natural	under an acre	Guadalupe Mountains National Park	MCKITTRICK
4 July 2000	Natural	under an acre	Guadalupe Mountains National Park	HAIL
26 July 2001	Natural	under an acre	Guadalupe Mountains National Park	WILDERNESS
26 July 1992	Natural	under an acre	Guadalupe Mountains National Park	FLASH
24 July 1994	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Guadalupe Mountains National Park	TRAILER1
24 July 1994	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Guadalupe Mountains National Park	TRAILER2

Every fire recorded in Culberson County

Mines and quarries near this property

4 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 4 workings within 5 miles of Wallace E. Pratt House: 3 occurrences, 1 producer. 1 still produces. What was taken out: Copper, Silver, Stone, Dimension, Fluorine-Fluorite. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
Mccombs Ranch Quarries	Stone, Dimension	Producer	Sedimentary
Unnamed Occurrence	Fluorine-Fluorite	Occurrence	Fluorite
Unnamed Prospect	Copper, Silver	Occurrence
Unnamed Prospect	Copper, Silver	Occurrence

Every working recorded in Culberson 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
Wallace Pratt Lodge	2.0 miles	1975
Guadalupe Ranch	4.3 miles	1978
Pinery Station	5.6 miles	1974

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 11000927 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Culberson County	All 6 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.