WEST FARGO - A Christine church will be on the road Tuesday as crews move the 125-year-old building to its new home at Bonanzaville.
Pleasant Church will replace St. John's Lutheran Church, which was destroyed by fire July 19, 2014, in the pioneer village in West Fargo.
Brenda Warren, executive director of Bonanzaville, said the church will start its roughly 30-mile trek at 8 a.m. Tuesday.
Schmidt Movers, based in Wyndmere, expects to have the church at its new location by about 3 p.m.
The church will not immediately be placed on its new site. Instead, it will be secured after Sept. 14, when crews are slated to pour the church's foundation on the northeast side of Bonanzaville. The church's steeple was previously moved in July.
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Warren said the moving company is working with the North Dakota Department of Transportation to ensure a clear route to Bonanzaville for the church. Warren said construction on Main Avenue, just outside of Bonanzaville, will not have an effect on the move.
Cass County Historical Society, which operates Bonanzaville, hoped to raise $150,000 to cover the cost of the move and new foundation. As of Wednesday, donors had contributed just shy of $67,000, including a $27,000 grant from The Fargo-Moorhead Convention and Visitor's Bureau. An anonymous benefactor has agreed to loan Bonanzaville the remaining cash so the church can be moved this summer.
Organizers had hoped that Bonanzaville's largest annual fundraising event, Pioneer Days on Aug. 15 and 16, would yield a bump in donations, but temperatures in the high 90s on Saturday followed by a cold and rainy Sunday kept large crowds away.
"Unfortunately Mother Nature was not kind to us this year," Warren said.
Warren said the Cass County Historical Society continues to plan fundraising efforts and weddings are still planned at the pavilion.
St. John's Lutheran Church had been a marital venue favorite. About 15 to 20 couples per year rented out the church and gazebo area for $700 per event.
St. John's was built northwest of Horace in 1898. Services were held at that site until 1967, when the remaining congregation merged with the Horace Lutheran and donated the church to Bonanzaville.
It's doppleganger, Pleasant Church, was built in 1890 and closed in 2013. The church's congregation agreed last year to donate it to Bonanzaville.
