Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church of Burr Oak is located approximately twenty miles northeast of the city of La Crosse, Wisconsin, in the “coulee region” of the state, a landscape of narrow ridges and steep-sided valleys. The church is located at a rural crossroads in a setting of agricultural fields and widely-scattered farmsteads, and it is surrounded on three sides by a churchyard cemetery. Established in 1856 by a group of German-American immigrants from the present-day German state of Thuringia, the Burr Oak Lutheran congregation has continued to care for the property up to the present.

The current church, built in 1898, is actually the third church on the site. The first, a modest structure built by the congregation’s first resident pastor, was moved across the road to serve as a schoolhouse. The second church was built in 1874 and burned down after being struck by lightning in 1898. Using $5,000 of insurance money and additionally-raised funds, the congregation commissioned Winona architects C.G. Maybury & Son to design the new church. The resulting church has a straightforward, modest plan and Gothic Revival-style architectural details. The building has retained nearly all of its original interior finishes, including its distinctive pressed metal paneling, its circa-1901 pipe organ, and its original altar furniture.

With its prominent tower, distinctive pinnacles and steeple, pointed arch stained glass windows, and evocative churchyard cemetery and countryside setting, the church is an outstanding example of late nineteenth-century Gothic Revival church design in rural La Crosse County.