All Saints' / St. James' Saga: How Faith Moves More Than Mountains

In 1872, during the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant and the reign of Queen Victoria, before the invention of the telephone, electric lights, or motor vehicles, the Rev. Lemuel Wells, an Episcopal missionary and his bishop rode together through the small village of Weston, nestled on the banks of Pine Creek in the vast expanse of eastern Oregon. As Bishop Morris recounts, "When I first passed through this region, from the foot of the Blue Mountains to Walla Walla, a distance of forty miles, it was an open and unoccupied waste, with hardly a human habitation for each 5 miles."

So begins the story of All Saints' / St. James Episcopal Church, a beautiful example of nineteenth-century American Carpenter Gothic religious architecture. Originally built in Weston, Oregon, then sawed in half and moved to its adopted home in Milton-Freewater, Oregon, the church's story provides a remarkable window into the settling of the Oregon Territory, Oregon's early statehood, and the evolution of one of Oregon's lesser-known corners.