Wedding venue opens 2 repurposed historic buildings in Harrisburg
June 26, 2024
Two historic structures from the Sioux Falls area are being given new life with a new purpose in a new community.
It took about two years to complete the transition.
Katie and Greg Jones – owners of The Meadow Barn at Country Orchards, The Veranda at Meadow Barn and The Country Apple Orchard just south of Sioux Falls in Harrisburg – recently celebrated the opening of the Beaver Creek Wedding Chapel.
It started in 2022, when the historic Heritage Park on the Augustana University campus needed to find a home for two of its four structures, Beaver Creek Lutheran Church and Eggers School, or else they would be torn down.
That’s when the conversations with the Joneses began.
The buildings were relocated from near 33rd Street between Grange and Prairie avenues to Harrisburg to make way for the new Midco Arena.
This was the second relocation for the church and the school as Augustana wasn’t their first home.
In fact, the Lutheran church from 1892 is one of the oldest established churches in Lincoln County. It came from south of Harrisburg.
“The architectural style is Vernacular Gothic Revival, which attempts to combine European attributes with the prairie experience,” according to the Heritage Park website.
“The church is made almost entirely of wood — the main building material available on the prairie at the time. As the rural population declined, the church’s congregation voted to close its doors in 1978. The church was then offered to Augustana and was moved to Heritage Park in 1985.”
Eggers School was built in 1909 on an acre of land near Renner Corner, according to the website.
While the slice of history no longer occupies one place on the college campus, the foundation behind it is dissolving with the knowledge the historic buildings still have a future.
“Once they (the schoolhouse and church) got to our property … we’ve been slowly renovating and getting things ready inside for weddings and events,” Katie Jones said.
The old schoolhouse has been transformed into a bridal suite for a wedding party and the old Lutheran church is a wedding chapel for smaller ceremonies of up to 100 people.
The Joneses have owned and operated the wedding venue Meadow Barn at Country Orchards since 2016. While Meadow Barn seats up to 400 guests and The Veranda at Meadow Barn can hold up to 250 people, the couple had been considering a smaller venue and an actual church building.
This seemed like the perfect fit.
“It’s fun to be able to expand our options to our clients and give them a more unique and intimate space with a piece of history,” she said.
For some clients, Jones said those larger spaces are just too big.
Some of the families who attended a recent ribbon-cutting and open house with the Harrisburg Chamber of Commerce were older couples married in that church more than a half-century ago and have now-grown children who were baptized there as well.
“Just to be able to bring that history and nostalgia is pretty neat to see it still living,” Jones said.
Historic Heritage Park structures find new homes, return to long-ago uses
