Aldo Leopold Shack

A National Historic Landmark. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

From the record

“The Aldo Leopold Shack and Farm is a historic farm on Levee Road in rural Sauk County, Wisconsin, United States. The property was acquired in the 1930s as a family summer retreat by the noted conservationist and writer Aldo Leopold and is the landscape that inspired his conservation ethic and the writing of his best-known work, A Sand County Almanac.”
Wikipedia article Aldo Leopold Shack and Farm, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 58 National Register listings published here for Sauk County · listed in 1978 · category: Building · a National Historic Landmark.

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

The listing

Listed as. Leopold, Aldo, Shack - the National Register files a house under its owner's surname.
Address. Portions of Sections 33 & 34, Town 13 North, Range 7 East, Fairfield Township, 53913
When was it listed? July 1978
Category. building
Town. Fairfield town
National Register reference number. 78000082 - 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

144 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 144 fires within 5 miles of Aldo Leopold Shack between 1992 and 2020, burning about 224 acres in total. 5 started naturally. 6 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
Equipment and vehicle use	54
Debris and open burning	37
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	14
Railroad operations and maintenance	11
Arson/incendiarism	6
Natural	5
Power generation/transmission/distribution	5
Misuse of fire by a minor	4
Recreation and ceremony	3
Smoking	2
Other causes	2
Fireworks	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
5 September 2016	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	LEVEE ROAD PARKING LOT
30 September 2017	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	COUNTY ROAD U FIRE
23 September 2004	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	not named
18 September 2005	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	not named
15 September 1999	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	not named
14 September 1998	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	not named
5 August 2002	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	not named
5 August 2001	Natural	under an acre	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	not named

Every fire recorded in Sauk County

Mines and quarries near this property

2 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 2 workings within 5 miles of Aldo Leopold Shack: 1 past producer, 1 producer. 1 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	Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
	Dubois Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
	Macksey Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer

Every working recorded in Sauk 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
Man Mound	5.2 miles	1978
Man Mound	5.3 miles	2016
Simonds 10-Sided Barn	6.3 miles	2020
A.G. Tuttle Estate	6.6 miles	1980
Marshall Memorial Hall	7.0 miles	1993
Charles Ringling House	7.3 miles	1997

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 78000082 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Sauk County	All 58 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.