Augustana - The School on Wheels

The wheels carried the school away from half its founders. The Augustana Synod, organized at the Jefferson Prairie settlement near Clinton, Wisconsin, in June 1860, joined Swedish pastors with Norwegian and Danish members, and in 1870 the Norwegians and Danes withdrew to form bodies of their own, among them the Norwegian Augustana Synod. Norwegian leaders took their branch of the school to Marshall; the Swedes moved theirs to Rock Island, Illinois, in 1875. Both kept the name, so Augustana College in Rock Island and Augustana University in Sioux Falls share a Chicago birth year.

What the plaque says

Augustana- The School on Wheels Augustana was founded as Augustana Seminary in Chicago in 1860 by the Scandinavian Evangelical Lutheran Augustana Synod. The school's purpose was "to educate young men for the holy ministry in the Lutheran church ...(and) to prepare men for the profession of teaching." Attracted by a generous land offer from the Illinois Central Railroad, Augustana moved to Paxton, Illinois in 1863, then to Marshall, Wisconsin, in 1869. With the westward migration of many Norwegians during the Dakota boom the school moved again to northwest Iowa at Beloit in 1881. Growing enrollment and the offer of a three-story building by the citizens of Canton led to the academy moving to Canton in 1884, while the seminary remained in Beloit until 1890. President Anthony G. Tuve (1890-1916) organized the Augustana College Asso- ciation in 1895 to support the school. Distinguished alumni include novelist Ole E. Rolvaag, physicist Merle A. Tuve, and South Dakota governors Sigurd Anderson and Archie Gubbrud. In 1917 the newly formed Norwegian Lutheran Church in America voted to merge Augustana College and the Lutheran Normal School in Sioux Falls and to close the Canton campus. In 1919 the Church re-opened the institution at Canton with the name of Canton Lutheran Normal School, which later became Augustana Academy and operated as a high school of the Lutheran Church. The Augustana Academy Association was formed in 1932 and assumed control of the school until its closing in 1971. (Continued on other side) Augustana- The School on Wheels (Continued from other side) The Old Main building of the Academy is an excellent example of Richardson Romanesque architecture with its massive scale, rough cut granite, and arched openings. Designed by Omeyer and Thori of St. Paul it is a four-story building, 104 feet long and 60 feet wide. Having received pledges totalling $10,000 from Augustana College Association members and $5,000 from the synod of the United Norwegian Lutheran Church, ground was broken in the late summer of 1901. Actual construction was begun the next year and the building was dedicated on October 4, 1903. The Old Main housed classrooms, offices, 25 dormitory rooms, a gymnasium, and a chapel that would seat about 500 people. Total cost of the structure, with furnishings, was $48,592.99. Augustana Academy was closed in 1971 and a total renovation of the building was completed in 1995 by the Metro Plains Corporation of St. Paul. It now houses 21 one bedroom apartments and five two bed- room apartments. Erected by Augustana Academy Alumni and South Dakota State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Falls Park — 19 mi
  The falls a town company came for in 1856, abandoned in 1862, and tried to make pay with a seven-story quartzite mill that ran for barely two years.

More markers nearby

• Canton — 0.7 mi
• Hiawatha Asylum for Insane Indians — 1.4 mi
• Canton Ski Hill — 1.4 mi
• Shindler — 12 mi