Valley Grove Church, Wheeling Township

In 1862, the Valley Grove Lutheran congregation erected a church made from local quarried limestone in Wheeling Township. By 1894, it had outgrown the original building and built a wooden Gothic Revival edifice seventy-five feet away. Although the congregation disbanded in 1973, the remaining picturesque site and its structures were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

Valley Grove Church traces its beginnings to the mid-1850s, when Norwegian immigrants in the Wheeling Township settlement of Tyske (or German) Grove (later called Valley Grove), Rice County, first held religious services in their log homes and in the open air. As early as 1860, meetings were held to discuss erecting a church three miles northwest of Nerstrand. The land’s owner, Fingal Fingalson, would not commit to selling. According to lore, “One day Ole Rudningen happened to meet him, so he asked him outright if the land was for sale or not. Fingalson said it was, so to close the deal then and there, Ole reached in his pocket and took out fifty cents—the only money he had, and paid it to close the deal.”

One of the limestone quarries near Hidden Falls, located in the Big Woods, provided the stone for the Valley Grove Church site, a short distance away. Construction was completed in 1862. Situated on a hilltop, facing west, the rectangular church with a gable roof measures fifty-five feet by thirty-five feet by twenty feet high and cost $1200. Simple in design, the building has four regularly spaced windows on the north and south walls. Originally, the cupola was painted Cottage Red and the shutters Essex Green.

From 1862 to 1867, Valley Grove operated as an independent congregation until joining the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, or what was commonly known then as the Norwegian Synod. The following year the church was officially dedicated on October 18, 1868. In 1874, a church bell weighing 1,433 pounds was purchased for $568 from the Troy Bell Foundry, Troy, New York.

By 1894, the burgeoning congregation had outgrown the stone church. Members who lived in Nerstrand lobbied for a church to be built in the village limits. To appease the congregation, two identical white wood-frame churches with high steeples were erected; one in Nerstrand (later named Grace Lutheran Church) and the other, known as the Valley Grove “West” Lutheran Church, facing east, seventy-five feet away from the old stone church. In 1949, the two churches of the Valley Grove Congregation (town and country) officially divided and became independent of each other. Both churches remained in the same parish.

The juxtaposition of the old limestone church and the new church perched on the grassy knoll created a dramatic panorama. The total cost to build both the West Church and Grace Lutheran Church was $2,975. The former was dedicated on November 8, 1894. Its white clapboard, Gothic-inspired look boasted ornamental pinnacles and pointed arches. Again, local quarried rock was utilized for the foundation. Like the stone church, plumbing was not installed.

The bell was transferred from the stone church and placed in the steeple of the new church. The following year, in 1895, the former church was transformed into a guild hall managed by its Ladies’ Aid Society. The ceiling was lowered and a kitchen was built in the rear of the building.

By the early 1970s, the congregation’s numbers had declined considerably. The few remaining members made the hard decision on April 17, 1972, to disband the following year. In May 1975, the West Church and grounds were officially transferred to the Society for the Preservation of the Valley Grove Church Building (later known as the Valley Grove Preservation Society). The old stone church and cemetery were transferred to the Valley Grove–Grace Cemetery Association. In 1982, the Valley Grove Church site was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

As of 2020, the Valley Grove Preservation Society seeks to maintain the two historic churches, a cemetery, and surrounding grounds, including restoration of a fifty-acre oak savanna. As a place to gather, Valley Grove continues to host weddings, funerals, an annual candlelight Christmas Eve service, and other social functions, such as the annual Valley Grove Country social held every fall.