West Luther Valley Lutheran Church

West Luther Valley Lutheran Church is a historic church built in 1871 in the Norwegian immigrant farm community southwest of Orfordville, Wisconsin on West Church Rd. In 1980 the church was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a remnant of that Norwegian community and for its association with the prominent Rev. Claus Clausen. The first Norwegian immigrants in the area then called Rock Prairie arrived in 1839. In 1844 Pastor Claus Lauritz Clausen visited from Muskego and conducted services for his Norwegian brethren in Skavlem's stone house. A congregation formed and they called Clausen to be their pastor. He arrived in 1846 and gave half his salary toward building the first Luther Valley Church - a stone building 28 by 44 feet, furnished with a home-made altar, pews, baptismal font and pulpit. Meetings of Norwegian Lutheran leaders from the upper Midwest were held at this East church in 1851 and 1853 at which the Synod of the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America was organized. Luther College was also planned here, at a meeting in 1861. Clausen stepped down as pastor in 1851 and switched to publishing Norwegian language newspapers out of a stone print shop near the East Church: the church paper Maanedstidende and the secular paper Emigranten. He also served as superintendent of the Norwegian Synod from 1851 to 1852. In 1853 Clausen went to Iowa, but r

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