California has earthquakes, Hawaii and Washington have volcanoes, the plains states have tornadoes, nearly everywhere has flooding at some time or another.
If you were going to build a standard wooden house somewhere in the US and do basic maintenance on it (ie, repaint, replace the roof every few decades, etc.), where should you put it to maximize the length of time it would remain undamaged by the environment?
In the world?
IIRC I once read about the safest place was somewhere in Idaho or Montana.
That said Idaho and Montana can get dangerous snowstorms, bitter cold and such which can kill you but when it comes to natural disasters nothing really touches them. No tornadoes or earthquakes or hurricanes or tsunamis or floods and whatnot.
If Yellowstone pops then you are likely to die but then if Yellowstone pops the whole world is screwed anyway.
I’ll see if I can find a cite.
Coldest and most arid climate, arid being most important.
I would think somewhere on high ground in the Appalachians. Every state has its floods, but they all occur down by the river. You are far enough inland to seldom have hurricanes without getting into tornado alley. They are also stable enough that severe earthquakes are rare. Studying a map of known faults before choosing a specific location would be a good idea.
I think metal roofing is making a comeback. Along with the elastomeric flashing, it should hold up a long time.
Someplace in the Rockies, Great Basin, or desert southwest would be best. The main threats you’ll face there are blizzards (in the north and at high elevations), forest or brush fires, and flash floods in ravines. The latter can be avoided by siting the house in an area sheltered from high winds (but not near a water course) and in an area dry enough to have such sparse vegetation that it would not sustain a brush or grass fire.
Farmington, NM is commonly called the safest place by the locals. It’s far enough south that it doesn’t get much of a winter but is above most flash flooding. There are no tornados, hurricanes or earthquakes and the nearest volcano is 150 miles away (of course it’s a super volcano so you’d still die if it errupted but still). All in all the whole 4 corners region is pretty distaster free.
One has to wonder.
Today they got a tornado in California.
I do not pay attention to every tornado and where they occur but I cannot remember California ever being subject to tornadoes (maybe it is one of those “uncommon but not unheard of” things).
I also recall a tornado in Miami several years ago which seemed pretty unusual.
Still, as “safe” as safe can be that is a lot better than in tornado alley (which has the vast majority of all tornadoes in the world [combination of warm Gulf air flowing north and cold air from Canada coming south and meeting in the middle]).
In the US? Corvallis, Oregon.
Never hear of anything bad happening in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Plus there’s the added bonus of saying you live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
The Great Basin National Park.
The multiple millennia-old trees in the area should be clue of its general stasis. It’s also where they’re building the 10,000 year clock.
Here in Tucson we don’t get earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, etc. The greatest natural disaster threat is drought, but that doesn’t catch you from out of the blue or make your roof collapse.
Does anything ever happen in Canada?
I rarely if ever hear of flooding, quakes, tornadoes or other natural disaters in that area.
Of course, I’m down here in Texas so maybe news doesn’t travel that far. . . .
I’d think that you’d be better off not building a standard wooden house, but instead something made of concrete to minimize the necessary maintenance. Or perhaps to build the house in an ancient cave.
I was going to suggest someplace in the Willamette Valley, as long as you’re above any flooding that the river itself might do (rare but not unheard of). I grew up in Portland, and the only major storm we had was when we caught the tail end of a Pacific typhoon on Columbus Day, 1962. Our maple tree came down, and we were without power for two or three days.
Roddy
I’m not sure I buy that. Corvallis is right in a high earthquake threat area. Yeah, its not a high probability event. But when one comes Corvallis could be wiped out. They also include drought in their calculations and evidently weight it highly enough that 7 of the 8 safest cities are all in Oregon and Washington.
Hereis a link that includes an alternate list (unfortunately they included crime as a measurement of “natural disaster” which skews them terribly too:
Hereis a third list:
I think you really have to have to have more than a couple hundred years of comparable data to really make an honest calculation. And we don’t have that for most of the country. And none of the lists I’ve cited use a weighting I think reasonable. Evidently you make up whatever you want, and as long as you leave out California and the Gulf states someone has a list to support you.
We have flooding every spring and tornadoes every summer, as well as wicked hail/thunderstorms, ice storms, blizzards, and hurricanes. You aren’t hearing about them, but they are happening. 
Speaking of the hurricanes, I recall watching a US station talking about a hurricane that was heading inland to hit the eastern coast of the continent; I burst out laughing when they said something about how it would just hit the maritime provinces, so there wouldn’t be any danger to anyone. Um, Canada is actually inhabited, guys. 
the rockies snow could cover your house up to the chimney top. a good two-story wooden house should have no trouble in an earthquake-prone area. there’s just the issue of you and your wife going to work in a high-rise, and your kid going to school in an old brownstone building.
avoiding flood-prone areas should be the easiest. man can tell by instinct alone. stay several miles from shore. my bet is the land east of the appalachians.
For the strict criteria of a basic wooden house being able to survive, New England has about the longest real-life experiment of this type going on with some very old structures surviving in some other Eastern states. The are a number of 1600’s houses still surviving and perfectly habitable in Eastern Massachusetts especially inland from the Atlantic Ocean. Wooden houses from the 1700’s are fairly common in my immediate area (I used to own one). Well built houses here can stay mostly intact for 250 - 350 years and probably much longer with only basic maintenance.
For houses, you have to look at not only the potential for major catastrophes but the possibility of infestation by termites and other wildlife, wildfires, and many other factors. I don’t know how far you want to push this but well-built wooden houses can survive several centuries or more even in areas that are humid during part of the year as long as there is time for the wood to dry again and no pests take up long-term residence. There are no huge threats to structures in inland New England on a large scale although tornadoes and hurricanes do strike selectively and occasionally. Earthquakes aren’t out of the question either but big ones are extremely rare.
The Air Force has an aircraft boneyardnear Tuscon. They seem to prefer the Southwest for those facilities, and I would think they have other reasons besides just cheap land.
Mostly because of weather conditions. Mild winters, little precipitation and low humidity.