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Photograph of Owen High School
Photograph by Jeff the quiet, CC0 1.0. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Owen High School

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.

From the record

“The first school was built in Owen in 1894, and had two grades, another grade being added in 1895. The original building was in use until 1907, when the new high school building was erected, consisting of two stories and basement and containing eight rooms, with gymnasium.”

History of Clark County Wisconsin (1918). Machine-read text.

One of 22 National Register listings published here for Clark County · listed in 2004 · category: Building.

Sources: the county history on the Internet Archive · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service · the Wikipedia article

The listing

  • What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 building as contributing to the listing.
  • Address. 101 East Third St., Owen, 54460
  • When was it listed? August 2004
  • Category. building
  • City. Owen city
  • National Register reference number. 04000848 - 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.

The ground it stands on

1,587 words

The chapter on Owen City in History of Clark County Wisconsin, published 1918 names Owen. This is what it says, exactly as the scans read.

Owen is one of the newer villages in Clark County, but is one of the most thriving, and as the center of extensive logging operations being carried on in the counties to the north has wonderful possibilities of future development and prosperity. It is an important railroad junction point, as the Fairchild & Northeastern has its terminal here, and the "Soo" line extends in four different directions, Three or four hundred square miles of the richest farming country are tributary to the village, and it is noted as a shipping point for stock and farm produce, as well as for its lumbering interests.

Passage source: History of Clark County Wisconsin, published 1918.

There has been a steady and conservative growth, the demand for houses always exceeding the supply, although the company and private individuals have kept busy building ever since the town was started. The village has an electric light plant (operated by the J. S. Owen Lumber Company) and water works and a sewer system. Besides the sawmill and box factory, which employ about 300 men, there is a large pea canning factory, with a capacity of 30,000 cases, a potato warehouse and elevator and teed mill, four hotels, four general stores, a bakery, butcher shop, tailor shop, jewelry store, two hardware stores, three barber shops, a shoe store and harness shop, one moving picture theatre, a bottling works, a thriving bank and a newspaper, besides several saloons, and a local telephone. The Woodland Hotel, owned by the Owen Company, is probably one of the best hotels in Wisconsin for a town the size of Owen, being built of stone and brick, with twenty-four transient rooms and all modern equipment. A Commercial Club, officered by some of the leading citizens, is active in advancing the general interests of the community.

Passage source: History of Clark County Wisconsin, published 1918.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Owen City - 1,587 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.

Fires near this property

4 since 2010

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 4 fires within 5 miles of Owen High School between 2010 and 2020, burning about 16 acres in total. None 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
Missing data/not specified/undetermined3
Equipment and vehicle use1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

DateCause SizeReported by Name on the report
23 June 2018Missing data/not specified/undeterminedunder an acreWisconsin Department of Natural Resources2018037
30 April 2018Missing data/not specified/undeterminedunder an acreWisconsin Department of Natural Resources2018024
11 December 2020Missing data/not specified/undetermined1.0 acresWisconsin Department of Natural Resources2020085
14 October 2010Equipment and vehicle use15 acresWisconsin Department of Natural Resourcesnot named

Every fire recorded in Clark County

Mines and quarries near this property

1 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 1 working within 5 miles of Owen High School: 1 past producer. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Where SiteCommodity StatusRecorded
Plautz Bros Inc Withee & Roder PitsSand and Gravel, ConstructionPast Producer

Every working recorded in Clark County

Storms near this property

31 since 1995

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Owen, the town this property stands in, in 31 storm reports between 1995 and 2023: 15 thunderstorm wind, 13 hail, 2 heavy rain, 1 funnel cloud. 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.

WhenEvent Place namedHarm What the report says
May 2020Thunderstorm WindOwen$30,000Trees and power lines were blown down in and near Owen. One tree landed on a house and over 1,100 customers were without power after the storms moved through.
July 1999Thunderstorm WindOwen$10,000no account filed
July 2002Thunderstorm WindOwen$7,500no account filed
August 2021Thunderstorm WindOwen$5,000Trees and power lines were blown down near Owen.
May 2001HailOwen$5,000no account filed
September 2000Thunderstorm WindOwen$5,000no account filed
July 2002Thunderstorm WindOwen$4,000no account filed
May 2001HailOwen$4,000no account filed
June 2002Thunderstorm WindOwen$3,500no account filed
August 2000Thunderstorm WindOwen$3,000no account filed
July 1999Thunderstorm WindOwen$2,000no account filed
May 2001HailOwen$1,500no account filed
September 2019Thunderstorm WindOwen$1,000A tree was blown down across a road in the vicinity of Owen.
August 2013Thunderstorm WindOwen$1,000Trees were blown down west of Curtiss along County Road P.
July 2010Thunderstorm WindOwen$1,000The fire department reported trees down in the city of Owen.
July 2008Thunderstorm WindOwen$1,000A newspaper article reported an old willow tree down in the city of Owen.
June 2014Thunderstorm WindOwen$500A few trees and large branches were blown down in Owen that required a fire truck to be used to clear roadways.
October 2023Heavy RainOwen-A volunteer observer reported 4.02 inches of rainfall in Owen.
March 2016Heavy RainOwen-A total of 2.26 inches of rain fell near Owen.
September 2013HailOwen-Hail ranged in size from three-quarters of an inch to one inch in Owen.
May 2020HailOwen-no account filed
April 2017HailOwen-no account filed
October 2012HailOwen-no account filed
July 2011Funnel CloudOwen-no account filed
April 2002HailOwen-no account filed
September 2002HailOwen-no account filed
May 2001Thunderstorm WindOwen-no account filed
June 2001HailOwen-no account filed
August 2000HailOwen-no account filed
June 1997HailOwen-no account filed
July 1995HailOwen-no account filed

Every storm recorded in Clark 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 PropertyDistance Listed
Woodland Hotelunder 500 feet2016

Sources for this property

National Archives recordThe nomination case file for reference 04000848 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia articleCommunity-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Clark CountyAll 22 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.