We looked at two churches in that flat bottomland sandwiched between the Missouri and Mississippi rivers that forms an almost peninsula-like eastern tail of St. Charles County. The first one, Trinity Lutheran Church at the intersection of Highway 94 and Church Road, dates from 1876, when it was calved off from Emmanuel Lutheran.

The church has a wonderful and comprehensive history of itself at this link. It is interesting to see that while the exterior is a strong northern German Gothic Revival style composition, the interior features a heavily classicizing high altar aedicule.

There is a small house next door that is actually a duplex. I do not know if there is anyone living there now.

A small cemetery, which curiously is laid out at a 45 degree angle, completes the complex.

The second church is St. Francis of Assisi Roman Catholic Church in Portage des Sioux, which I looked at way back in January of 2009.

It is a stout, German-style Hallkirche in design with no noticeable transepts.

Note the similarity in appearance of the spire to that of the former St. Augustine’s.

The engaged buttresses are also typical of the style.

While the parish is one of the oldest in the Archdiocese, dating from 1799, the church itself dates from 1879, when German immigrants had now flooded the area, far outnumbering the original French colonial settlers. It shows in the architecture of their church.

The school, built in the mid Twentieth Century, still stands across the street.