Religious Institutions

The United Congregational Church stands on Highway 11 in Birchdale, a white clapboard church with a covered entry and a bell on the lawn, part of the Rainy River Parish in the United Church of Christ. According to the congregation’s own history, mission services began in the Rainy River Valley in October 1902, charter members signed the church covenant in March 1905, and the present building’s cornerstone was laid in 1913 and dedicated in January 1914 — a century of worship marked in 2014. Sunday worship is at 10:00 a.m., followed by coffee and fellowship; all are welcome.

Bethany Lutheran Church is a white clapboard country church with a steepled bell tower on Highway 11 in Loman, in the Rainy River Valley of Koochiching County. The congregation belongs to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, in its Northeastern Minnesota Synod. Like the other early churches of these homesteading communities — Loman’s post office dates to 1901 — it has long been a gathering place for the families of the surrounding farm country, and Sunday worship continues at the little church at 7667 Highway 11.

A historic 1913 white clapboard Gothic church with a steeple and small cemetery at Greaney, built for the area’s homesteaders and donated by Thomas Feigh in memory of his mother Bridget. The church is closed but lovingly maintained as a memorial to the vanished farming community around it.

A historic Russian Orthodox church in the Bramble area of southeastern Koochiching County, built in 1917-18 by the Lucachick and Sorokie families and their neighbors, with its gold onion dome and Orthodox cross still standing over the surrounding forest. An ongoing preservation project is restoring the building; the church land was donated by the Lucachicks and the adjacent cemetery land by the Sorokies.