“The Struggle Has Ended”

Early in the twentieth century, Danish immigrants settled in and around Junction City. Like most immigrants, they came to stay and live like other Americans without abandoning their ethnic heritage. As one letter writer explained to his fiance in Denmark, “We desire a danish room in an American house.” The first Danes organized a congregation affiliated with the Danish Lutheran church in America and chose a location on the corner of Dane Lane and Deal Street for the church cemetery, but they quickly discovered that a floodplain was a poor place for a cemetery. In 1903 the congregation purchased this hilltop for its cemetery, called The Danish Cemetery. The settlement ultimately counted well over a hundred Danish families, flourished for more than half a century, and still makes a significant contribution to the community.

Oregon · United States