Valley Grove

Valley Grove is a historic Lutheran church complex in Wheeling Township, Minnesota, United States. It consists of two 19th-century churches surrounded by a hilltop cemetery. The older building was constructed in stone in 1862 by a rural community of Norwegian immigrants. The congregation outgrew the first church and constructed a larger, wooden replacement in 1894, converting the original building into a guild hall. The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 for its local significance in the themes of architecture, art, and religion. It was nominated for encapsulating two phases of rural ecclesiastical architecture in a dramatic hilltop tableau, and for its role in anchoring eastern Rice County's dispersed community of Norwegian immigrants.
Valley Grove Church traces its beginnings to the mid-1850s, when Norwegian immigrants in a settlement alternately called Tyske Grove or German Grove first held religious services in their log homes and outdoors. As early as 1860, meetings were held to discuss erecting a church three miles northwest of Nerstrand, Minnesota. Pastor Bernt Julius Muus had baptized 52 children under an oak tree on the site in 1859. 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".

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