Photograph of Saint Augustine Church — Photograph by WrongBrothers12, CC BY-SA 4.0. Via Wikimedia Commons.

St. Augustine Church

Built in 1844 (Greek Revival architecture). Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.

From the record

“Saint Augustine Church is an early Catholic church built in 1844 in New Diggings, Wisconsin, during the area's lead-mining boom. The building was designed by pioneer priest and amateur architect Father Samuel Mazzuchelli, and survives unchanged from that early era.”
Wikipedia article Saint Augustine Church (New Diggings, Wisconsin), CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 13 National Register listings published here for Lafayette County · listed in 1972 · category: Building · built in 1844, Greek Revival architecture.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · 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. 26291 High St., New Diggings, 53586
When was it listed? February 1972
Category. building
Town. New Diggings town
When was it built? 1844
Architectural style. Greek Revival architecture
National Register reference number. 72000057 - 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

12,581 words

This property stands in New Diggings Town. History of Lafayette County, Wisconsin, Containing an Account of Its Settlement, Growth, Development and Resources; an Extensive and Minute Sketch of Its Cities, Towns and Villages ... Its War Record, Biographical Sketches ... the Whole Preceded by a History of Wisconsin, Statistics of the State, and an Abstract of Its Laws and Constitution, and of the Constitution of the United States, published 1881 gives that township a chapter of its own.

The chapter covers the township.

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 New Diggings Town - 12,581 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.

Fires near this property

2 since 2018

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 2 fires within 5 miles of St. Augustine Church in 2018, burning about 5 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/undetermined	2

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
24 April 2018	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	5.0 acres	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	2018006
11 April 2018	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	4

Every fire recorded in Lafayette County

Mines and quarries near this property

10 of 304 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 304 workings within 5 miles of St. Augustine Church: 173 past producers, 115 unknowns, 7 prospects, 6 occurrences. 3 still produce. What was taken out: Zinc, Lead, Lead, Zinc, Zinc, Lead. 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
Bell Prospect	Zinc, Iron, Lead	Occurrence
Etna Mine	Lead, Iron	Past Producer
Schullsburg Mine	Zinc, Lead, Barium-Barite, Iron	Producer	Barite, Galena, Marcasite, Pyrite, Sphalerite
Southcott Prospect	Iron, Lead, Zinc	Prospect
Birbeck Prospect	Iron, Zinc	Prospect
Birkbeck Mine	Iron, Zinc	Past Producer
Farrey Mine	Iron, Zinc	Past Producer	1940
Doc Schampers Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Producer
Eagle-Picher Ind Shullsburg Tailing	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
Eagle-Pitcher Ind. Shullsburg Mill	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer

Every working recorded in Lafayette 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
Benton Stone Water Tower	3.6 miles	1999
Gratiot House	5.4 miles	1980
Water Street Commercial Historic District	5.7 miles	1990

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 72000057 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Lafayette County	All 13 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.