The Oregon-Idaho Conference of The United Methodist Church, the congregation’s parent body, states that the church “was first established in 1876,” that a church building “was officially erected in 1899,” and that the town’s Presbyterians built a church in 1910 which Wallowa UMC bought in 1940 and occupied until January 2019, when for safety reasons and declining membership it moved services to the community center. The conference describes Sunday school, a community food bank in the basement, Memorial Day breakfasts and a quarter re-sale clothing shop run with the local Presbyterian church, and says remaining members transferred to Joseph UMC ahead of a closure vote in September 2020. In April 2021 the conference handed the keys and deed to the Nez Perce Tribe in what it called “a ceremony of friendship, celebration and repentance.”
No street address for the 1910 building is published, so the record is placed at the community. The conference names the congregation’s last lay pastor, but the congregation no longer exists to name its own leaders, so the atlas does not record the name. The building’s use since 2021 is not established here.
Through time
Congregation established, according to the conference.
A church building erected, later sold to the Church of Christ and then to a private family.
The congregation bought the 1910 Presbyterian church building.
Services moved from the building to the community center in January.
The conference scheduled a closure vote for September 16.
The building and deed were handed to the Nez Perce Tribe in April.
