Coon Prairie Lutheran Church

Westby Coon Prairie
Lutheran Church

County Coon Prairie Lutheran Church

Coon Prairie Lutheran Church was established on July 12, 1852, just four years after Norwegian settlers entered the Westby area. The congregation received its first pastor in 1855 and dedicated its first wooden building in 1857. Coon Prairie’s pastors served as many as 11 congregations throughout the region for many years. During the pastorate of Halvor Halvorsen (1872-1921), a fine stone building was erected which burned to the ground on Easter Sunday, 1909. Congregation members could not agree on a new building site and two identical edifices were built at $22,500 each: Country Coon Prairie on the original site and Westby Coon Prairie in the thriving new town. Coon Prairie was an important member of the Norwegian Lutheran Synod and experienced the theological divisions over predestination which rocked that church body in the 1880s. In 1917 it joined 92 percent of Norwegian Lutherans in the United States in forming the Norwegian Lutheran Church in America and is currently part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.