In the mid-1870s, a group of emigrants from Sweden gathered in Lockport, Illinois, and sent N.J. Ronlund to inspect potential farmland near the Swedona settlement in Minnehaha County, Dakota Territory. After his favorable report, 33 people left Illinois and traveled together for several weeks in a covered wagon train. In Swedona, each family claimed a homestead and built either a sod house or a hillside dugout home. The families rotated weekly religious services in their homes, but wanted a church of their own. On April 9, 1877, Pastor John E. Wretlof presided over the organization of the Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Mission Church of Swedona. The congregation, now in its second century of Christian service, has worshiped in three church buildings: a sod church built in 1879 one mile east of the site, a 28- by 32-foot wooden frame church built two years later 100 feet west on land donated by C.F. Hanson, and the present building, which dates from 1913. The church cemetery is the resting place of people whose lives were fulfilled there or were lost in a blizzard.