Upper Settlement Rural Historic District

With old St. Olaf's Lutheran Church as its focal point, the Upper Settlement Rural Historic District encompasses approximately 2900 acres of land and includes a cohesive grouping of middle to late 19th-century Norwegian farmsteads that are concentrated along the south side of the upper Meridian Creek valley. The boundaries outline an elongated area that extends from a point about one mile east of Cranfills Gap to the eastern border of the Knud Knudson land patent, a distance of about four miles. Because the creek and hills of the valley physically isolate this area from the adjacent territory, the upper settlement region has developed somewhat independently from other parts of the Norwegian community. To a remarkable degree, this area retains its 19th-century, rural sense of time and place, and relatively few intrusive elements detract from its historic character. Since virtually every type of farmhouse built by the Norwegian immigrants can be seen within the Upper Settlement, the district represents a textbook history of this distinctive vernacular architecture. The district also contains a number of ruins that, because of their abandonment many years ago and their relatively undisturbed nature, possess archeological potential.

Little is known of the early (pre-1865) history of the Upper Settlement, but one of the first Norwegian families known to have homesteaded in the upper Meridian Creek valley were Bersvend and Kari Swenson. After arriving in Bosque County in 1857, the Swensons applied for a 160-acre land grant from the state in 1860 and established their farm on the north side of Rogstad Mountain just beneath the Berger and Martha Rogstad place. Here they erected a one-and-a-half-story stone house (no. 42) that was sited on a bluff overlooking the valley. Information from the General Land Office and the 1860 Census would seem to indicate that the Swensons erected this house during the early 1860s. This structure, which was substantially remodeled around 1900, is one of the oldest surviving residences in the entire Norwegian settlement area.

J. Lasson and Oline Reierson were another of the early families to settle in the upper Meridian Creek valley. They came to Bosque County in 1860 and, like the Swensons, applied for a 160-acre land grant that year. The Reiersons selected land adjacent to, but down the mountain from, the Swenson farm, where they erected a one-story stone house (no. 46) near a small stream that flows north toward Meridian Creek.

General Land Office records reveal that Canute Olson and E.R. Skeinland (or Skimland) also received patents for land within the valley in the early 1860s. The history of both of these properties, their owners, and the stone house that presently stands on each of these parcels of land is at best sketchy. Research suggests that the structures referred to herein as the Olson-Arneson. (no. 39) and Hans J. and Petra