Editor’s note: This year, Yelm will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the city’s official incorporation, which took place on Dec. 8, 1924. Every month, the Nisqually Valley News will present an aspect of the city’s history. Churches and religion within Yelm serve as June’s topic.
Churches and religion have always had a place in the Nisqually Valley’s history. Nearly 25 years before the Yelm was officially incorporated as a city, the first church opened its doors.
According to Richard and Floss Loutzenhiser’s “Story of Yelm,” published in 1948, the Eureka Church was officially dedicated on Sunday, Oct. 1, 1899, as Rev. A.J. Joslyn, presiding elder, preached the sermon on the occasion. C.G. Morris was the church’s pastor.
Edgar Prescott, who published “Yelm’s First Church” in 1980, said classes at the Eureka Church, located “six or seven” miles from Yelm, began in 1899. He included quotes from Cleora Paine, who attended the church in 1899.
Paine stated that in 1889, the church was initially just one room that was shared among church members. Eventually, after the Ladies Aid group began hosting meetings at the location, Paine said the men in the community built a kitchen at the back of the church.
“We didn’t mind that there were no separate rooms for Sunday school classes,” Paine said in Prescott’s book. “The little ones had a corner, the intermediates, the young people, the adults, we each had a corner of our own.”
In Richard and Floss Loutzenhiser’s “Story of Yelm,” Helen Monroe Wolf recounted the history of the Yelm Community Church, another early religious establishment. After it was constructed in 1909, John W. Blackwell served as the first reverend at the church. For the first year of its existence, the church was strictly non-denominational, according to the “Story of Yelm.” D.R. Hughes, James Mosman and T. Murphy each served as trustees at the Yelm Community Church after it opened.
Ministers from nearby towns served the church as they became available, since there wasn’t a permanent minister at the location. Due to services not being regularly conducted, the Methodist church offered to complete the building and to build a parsonage in Yelm, and the trustees agreed to deed the property to the Methodists.
After Blackwell left in 1914, during the next seven years, seven ministers were listed in the church’s record of pastors, including John H. Jones, W. II Rees Jr., C.W. McLaughlin, E.O. Harris, C.B. Seely, W.P. Rutledge and James Pascoe.
According to “The Story of Yelm,” the first Catholic church arrived in the area in 1921 in McKenna and was initially served by the Little Mission Church in dedication to St. Margaret Mary.
The church was initially under the leadership of Father Raymond Leary, who “endeared himself to people of all faiths in his 25 years sojourn here,” according to Richard and Floss Loutzenhiser’s book. “[Father Raymond] was relieved only once and then for a short time by Father Francis O’Driscoll.”
Today, a plethora of churches serve Yelm and surround areas, including the Church of Living Water, Crossroads Community Covenant Church, Yelm’s Jesus Name Pentecostal Church, Yelm’s Church of Christ, the McKenna Community Church, Yelm’s Outpost Church, the Yelm Prairie Christian Center, the Calvary Baptist Church, Yelm’s Seventh-day Adventist Church, St. Columban Catholic Church, the First Baptist Church of Yelm, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Wat Prochum Rainsey, a Cambodian Buddhist temple.
Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment was also established in 1988 by J.Z. Knight; however, the school’s leaders state the school is not a church.
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