Methodists first organized in Wallowa in 1876 and raised a church in 1899. In 1910 the town’s Presbyterians built a church of their own; the Methodists bought it in 1940 and worshipped there until January 2019, when a shrinking congregation and an unsafe building moved services to the community center. The Oregon-Idaho Conference remembers a Sunday school, a food bank in the basement, Memorial Day breakfasts and a quarter clothing shop run with the Presbyterians. The last members transferred to Joseph before the closure vote in September 2020, and in April 2021 the conference handed the keys and the 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 sits at the community. The conference names the congregation’s last lay pastor; the congregation no longer exists to name its own leaders, so the atlas does not. What the building has been used for since 2021 is not recorded 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.
