Lake Chelan Hydroelectric Power Plant

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.

From the record

One of 46 National Register listings published here for Chelan County · listed in 1988 · category: District.

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

The listing

Address. Lake Chelan, Chelan, 98816
When was it listed? December 1988
Category. district
Also known as. Hydroelectric Power Plants in Washington State, 1890-1938 MPS
Census division. Chelan
National Register reference number. 88002739 - 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

47 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 47 fires within 5 miles of Lake Chelan Hydroelectric Power Plant between 1992 and 2020, burning about 97,532 acres in total. 16 started naturally. 1 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	16
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	9
Debris and open burning	8
Other causes	4
Firearms and explosives use	2
Recreation and ceremony	2
Fireworks	2
Misuse of fire by a minor	1
Power generation/transmission/distribution	1
Equipment and vehicle use	1
Arson/incendiarism	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
4 September 1992	Arson/incendiarism	5.0 acres	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	not named
18 September 2020	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	UNION 3
13 September 1996	Natural	175 acres	Spokane District	DEER MTN
6 August 1999	Natural	under an acre	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	not named
5 August 2003	Natural	440 acres	Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest	THE BUTTE
3 August 2016	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	156 acres	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	FOOTHILLS
3 August 1999	Natural	168 acres	Washington State Department of Natural Resources Headquarters	UNION VALLEY
17 August 2018	Natural	under an acre	Spokane District	FOOT HILLS

Every fire recorded in Chelan County

Mines and quarries near this property

10 of 17 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 17 workings within 5 miles of Lake Chelan Hydroelectric Power Plant: 13 past producers, 2 occurrences, 1 unknown, 1 prospect. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Gold, Clay, Pumice. 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
Chelan Butte	Tin	Occurrence
Chelan Falls Deposit	Mica	Past Producer
Chelan Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
Staymen	Pumice	Occurrence
Chelan	Clay	Past Producer
Union Valley	Clay	Past Producer
Butte	Gold	Unknown
Cook	Gold	Past Producer
Kingsman and Pershall	Gold	Past Producer
Lakeside Placer	Gold	Prospect

Every working recorded in Chelan County

Storms near this property

18 since 1997

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Chelan, the town this property stands in, in 18 storm reports between 1997 and 2022: 10 hail, 3 wildfire, 2 flash flood, 1 lightning. The reports record 6 injuries. 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
August 1999	Lightning	Chelan	6 hurt	6 Persons injured while camping in Lake Wenatchee State Park
August 1998	Wildfire	Chelan	$10,000,000	Lightning sparked a large fire at Twenty five mile creek on Lake Chelan. Over 6300 acres of forest land have burned. The fire was allowed to burn out and will not be officially out until mid October.
August 2001	Wildfire	Chelan	$200,000	The "Rex Creek Complex" of fires resulted from numerous lightning strikes early on the morning of August 12. One vacation home on the north shore of Lake Chelan was destroyed in the first day of the fires' existence. Over half of the acres burned in this complex of fires were on federally-designated wilderness land. The fire burned until late September, scorching over 50,000 acres.
July 2022	Flash Flood	Chelan	$1,000	Residence and garage flooded in Chelan.
May 2015	Hail	Chelan	-	A trained weather spotter reported 1.0 inch hail denting cars in the Manson, Washington area which is approximately 3 miles west of Chelan, WA.
May 2015	Hail	Chelan	-	A trained spotter reported 0.75 inch hail just south of Manson on Lake Chelan, WA.
May 2015	Hail	Chelan	-	A trained spotter reported 0.75 inch hail near across Lake Chelan not too far from Manson, WA.
May 2015	Heavy Rain	Chelan	-	Heavy rain from thunderstorms washed debris out onto Wapato Lake Road near Mills Bay Casino near Chelan, WA.
August 1999	Wildfire	Chelan	-	160 Acre fire 5N of Chelan
June 1997	Hail	Chelan	-	3/4 INCH HAIL
June 1997	Hail	Chelan	-	1 INCH HAIL
June 1997	Hail	Chelan	-	3/4 INCH HAIL IN CHELAN
June 1997	Hail	Chelan	-	1 INCH HAIL IN CHELAN
June 1997	Hail	Chelan	-	3/4 INCH HAIL TURNED GROUND WHITE. 500 ACRES OF APPLES AND CHERRIES DAMAGED
July 2006	Hail	Chelan	-	no account filed
July 2006	Flash Flood	Chelan	-	no account filed
July 2006	Hail	Chelan	-	no account filed
April 2005	Thunderstorm Wind	Chelan	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Chelan 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

5 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
Ruby Theater	1.5 miles	1991
St. Andrews Episcopal Church	1.5 miles	1992
Richard Hinton Lord House	1.9 miles	1999
Chelan Butte Lookout	1.9 miles	1990
Lucas Homestead	5.1 miles	1978

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 88002739 in Record Group 79.
Chelan County	All 46 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.