The area was settled in 1886 by Swedes, who originally were Lutherans but converted to Presbyterianism when a Presbyterian minister from Brady provided services, and no Lutheran minister seemed available. In 1903 the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway built a line west of the settlement (tracks since removed) and the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe to the east in 1912, supporting the prosperous community of East Sweden (West Sweden was about twelve miles west) around a church built in 1892. The church was destroyed in a windstorm in 1916 and rebuilt in 1921. The well-crafted wooden church has a hipped roof, Gothic-arched windows, and a projecting portico with boxed columns. The church and the cemetery across the road are the sole remains of the once-thriving community that had disappeared by the 1940s as businesses moved away.