Hutto Evangelical Lutheran Church

The ministers who first came to Hutto in 1890 served a congregation with its own story. Palm Valley began in 1853, when a Swedish widow, Anna Palm, settled east of Round Rock with six sons. Other Swedes followed in the late 1850s, and A. J. Nelson built a log church there in 1861. The Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Brushy Congregation, later Palm Valley Lutheran Church, was established in 1870. The Handbook of Texas lists a Swedish church in Hutto by 1896, and the Hutto congregation worshiped in Swedish until 1940.

What the plaque says

Hutto Evangelical Lutheran Church Lutheran church services in Hutto can be traced to 1890, when ministers M. Noyd and Gustav Berglund of the Palm Valley Lutheran Church at Brushy (now Round Rock) conducted occasional services for the area's rapidly growing Swedish population. In 1892 August Swenson led a successful effort to organize the Hutto Evangelical Lutheran Church. The first church structure (1893) was destroyed by a tornado and replaced in 1894. In 1902 a third church building was constructed at this site an dedicated by the Rev. O. H. Sylvan. Church services were conducted in the Swedish language until 1940. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Round Rock — 8.9 mi
  A table-shaped stone in Brushy Creek gave Round Rock its name in 1854; the Chisholm Trail crossed the creek near it, and Old Town stayed behind when the railroad pulled the town east.
• Inner Space Cavern — 9.5 mi
  A Georgetown cave found in 1963 when highway engineers drilled test holes, holding Pleistocene fossils and 72-degree rooms that visitors reach by an artificial tunnel.
• Williamson County Courthouse — 10 mi
  The fifth Williamson County courthouse, a Beaux Arts building by C. H. Page, rises over a Georgetown square of more than 50 Victorian-era buildings.
• Mount Bonnell — 21 mi
  Austin's old lookout over the Colorado, named by an 1838 traveler, picnicked on by George and Libbie Custer, and reached by a 1939 flight of about 100 limestone steps.

More markers nearby

• Hutto — 0.3 mi
• Hutto Baptist Church — 2.2 mi
• Monodale Community — 3.0 mi
• Major Robert McNutt — 3.1 mi