West Luther Valley Lutheran Church

Built in 1847. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

From the record

“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.”
Wikipedia article West Luther Valley Lutheran Church, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 141 National Register listings published here for Rock County · listed in 1980 · category: Building · built in 1847.

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

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 building as contributing to the listing.
Address. SW of Orfordville on W. Church Rd., Ordfordville, 53520
When was it listed? May 1980
Category. building
Town. Spring Valley town
When was it built? 1847
National Register reference number. 80000191 - 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.

The ground it stands on

3,484 words

This property stands in Spring Valley Town. History of Rock County, and Transactions of the Rock County Agricultural Society and Mechanics' Institute, published 1856; The History of Rock County, Wisconsin; Its Early Settlement, Growth, Development, Resources, Etc., published 1879 gives that township a chapter of its own.

The chapter covers the township.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Spring Valley Town - 3,484 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.

Fires near this property

16 since 2010

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 16 fires within 5 miles of West Luther Valley Lutheran Church between 2010 and 2020, burning about 13 acres in total. None started naturally. 1 was 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
Debris and open burning	6
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	4
Smoking	3
Power generation/transmission/distribution	1
Arson/incendiarism	1
Equipment and vehicle use	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
29 June 2020	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	68
20 June 2018	Power generation/transmission/distribution	1.0 acres	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	105
17 June 2020	Equipment and vehicle use	1.0 acres	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	60
29 April 2018	Debris and open burning	5.0 acres	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	78
29 April 2018	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	82
23 April 2018	Smoking	under an acre	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	74
23 April 2018	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	1804082
22 April 2018	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	72

Every fire recorded in Rock County

Mines and quarries near this property

4 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 4 workings within 5 miles of West Luther Valley Lutheran Church: 2 past producers, 1 producer, 1 unknown. 1 still produces. What was taken out: Stone, Crushed/Broken, Sand and Gravel, Construction, Stone. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status
Coles Quarry	Stone	Unknown
Egan Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Cole Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
Rock County Highway Department	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer

Every working recorded in Rock 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
Risum Round Barn	1.8 miles	1979
Orfordville Depot	3.8 miles	1988
Gempeler Round Barn	3.9 miles	1979
Samuel Smiley House	6.1 miles	1982
Footville State Bank	7.3 miles	1982
William J. Owen Store	7.3 miles	1982

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 80000191 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Rock County	All 141 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.