Elbe Evangelical Lutheran Church

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

From the record

“The Elbe Evangelical Lutheran Church is a small church in Elbe, Pierce County, Washington, USA. The church has been listed by sources, including Ripley's Believe It or Not!, as the world's smallest functional church.”
Wikipedia article Elbe Evangelical Lutheran Church, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 215 National Register listings published here for Pierce County · listed in 1976 · 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.
Address. WA 5, Elbe, 98328
When was it listed? October 1976
Category. building
Census division. Eatonville
National Register reference number. 76001899 - 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

83 since 1994

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 83 fires within 5 miles of Elbe Evangelical Lutheran Church between 1994 and 2020, burning about 446 acres in total. 4 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
Recreation and ceremony	41
Debris and open burning	18
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	16
Natural	4
Arson/incendiarism	2
Equipment and vehicle use	1
Smoking	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
7 September 2014	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	7.0 acres	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	MINERAL HILL
5 September 2011	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	GOTCHA TRAIL
4 September 2003	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	not named
3 September 2011	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	MINERAL RD
22 September 2014	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	BORDERLINE
16 September 1998	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	not named
14 September 2003	Debris and open burning	3.0 acres	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	not named
12 September 2006	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	not named

Every fire recorded in Pierce County

Mines and quarries near this property

7 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 7 workings within 5 miles of Elbe Evangelical Lutheran Church: 5 past producers, 2 occurrences. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Mercury, Clay, 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.

Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
Ladd	Mercury	Occurrence	Cinnabar
Ladd Mine	Clay	Occurrence
Unnamed Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
Unnamed Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Unnamed Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Unnamed Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Unnamed Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer

Every working recorded in Pierce 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
	John Galbraith House	7.6 miles	1982

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 76001899 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Pierce County	All 215 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.