Custer School

Built in 1932. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.

From the record

One of 215 National Register listings published here for Pierce County · listed in 1987 · category: Building · built in 1932.

Sources: 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. 7700 Steilacoom Blvd. SW, Tacoma, 98498
When was it listed? July 1987
Category. building
Also known as. Rural Public Schools of Washington State MPS
Census division. Tacoma
When was it built? 1932
National Register reference number. 87001162 - 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 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 2 fires within 5 miles of Custer School between 1992 and 2008, burning about 2 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
Natural	1
Misuse of fire by a minor	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
6 September 2008	Misuse of fire by a minor	under an acre	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	TIMBERLAKE
20 July 1992	Natural	2.0 acres	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	not named

Every fire recorded in Pierce County

Mines and quarries near this property

10 of 22 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 22 workings within 5 miles of Custer School: 20 past producers, 1 producer, 1 occurrence. 1 still produces. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Diatomite, Limestone, Dimension. 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
Meadow Park Pit & Mill	Limestone, Dimension	Past Producer
Parkland	Diatomite	Occurrence
Gravel Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Gravel Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Gravel Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Gravel Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Gravel Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Gravel Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Holroyd Land Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Lakeview Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer

Every working recorded in Pierce County

Storms near this property

3 since 1997

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Tacoma, the town this property stands in, in 3 storm reports between 1997 and 2015: 2 heavy rain, 1 tornado. 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.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
May 1997	Tornado (F1)	Tacoma	$150,000	A weak tornado touched down in a south Tacoma neighborhood just east of I-5. A church suffered roof and beam damage and several trees were pushed over or snapped off. There were also some downed fences.
October 2015	Heavy Rain	Tacoma	$50,000	A landslide closed southbound Schuster Parkway in Tacoma on the afternoon of Oct 10th after a burst of heavy rain moved through Pierce County. The heavy rain and wind also caused sporadic power outages and some spinouts elsewhere in Pierce County. A part of I-705 was also closed at South 11th Street due to flooding. \|\|Runoff from the heavy rainfall overwhelmed drainage systems near Tacoma's Stadium High School resulting water and debris running through the campus and tumbling into and flooding the football field.
September 2013	Heavy Rain	Tacoma	$50,000	Heavy rain inundated more than 60 units in a mini storage business in Tacoma.\|Tacomas environmental services crews responded to 76 calls of flooding due to heavy rain.

Every storm 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

6 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
Fort Steilacoom	1.2 miles	1977
Rhodesleigh	1.5 miles	1983
Boatman-Ainsworth Hose	2.1 miles	1982
Lakewold	2.4 miles	2014
Munson, Herbert and Barbara House	2.6 miles	2019
Steilacoom Catholic Church	2.7 miles	1974

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 87001162 in Record Group 79.
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.
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.