Decline
Natural Disaster
Worsening soil quality played a big role in the longevity of these settlements. Droughts did not help the situation, and were ultimately big blows to these settlements. Such natural disasters were an occurrence that did not happen as often in the Midwest. There were also multiple epidemics that spurred people to get up and leave Texas. Though heritage remained, many of the original settlers left Texas, and those who remained failed to attract new settlers.According to the Handbook of Texas "despite the famine, more than thirty Norwegian families stayed to farm the plains. By the 1920s they had formed a tightly knit community centered around the school and church. Oslo retained much of its ethnic character into the 1930s; such foods as lutefisk and lefse were featured at festive social occasions, church services were conducted in Norwegian, and the language continued to be spoken in many homes. But then the improvement of highway transportation and the consolidation of the Oslo school district with that of Gruver, eighteen miles southeast, resulted in a gradual assimilation. Nevertheless, the Oslo community had remained well defined."
Assimilation
By 1880, the railroad arrived in Clifton, Bosque County, just west of the Norwegian settlement. The proximity to the railroad encouraged the growth of this small community. By 1896, the Lutheran College of Clifton was founded and near the end of the 1910s, the town's heavy population of Norwegians settlers would help bring its own church. The increase of contact with other communities thanks to the railroad would eventually bring assimilation into American society to their community.However, the biggest factors leading to the decline of Norwegian townships in Texas was how the settlements were established in the first place. Many of these settlements did not establish a strong metropolitan center, and instead were composed of rural farming communities that were vaguely connected based on shared culture and heritage. Many Norwegian-Americans were focused on farming as their main way of life. Because of this, urban areas were not established in Texas, which led to these areas becoming obsolete as more and more people moved to cities. The settlements not establishing a center was “not surprising, given the traditional rural orientation of these people. In Norway itself small farms long had been organized into rural communities, and it was these, and not the towns, that served as centers for immediate social, economic, and religious activities. The immigrant farmers who came to Texas in the 19th century apparently brought this tradition with them, and structured their new settlements along similar lines, dividing them into a series of small and loosely-knit rural communities." (Texas Historical Commission)
As these settlers moved to cities, they had more contact with people of other nationalities, and the clusters of Norwegians were no longer common. Over generations, they mostly assimilated into the larger culture. However, some remnants of culture remain, despite forces working against this. One reminder of this is the Oslo Lutheran Church Building, often called the Cathedral of the Plains. Peter Peterson describes the Oslo Lutheran Church “one of the finest in the vast Panhandle region. The history of this church, much like that of the rural community which it serves, is one of both hardship and triumph over adversity."
Sources to explore:
Handbook of Texas by the Texas State Historical Association
The Norwegian Settlement of Bosque County by the Texas Historical Commission
Oslo on the Texas High Plains by Peter L. Petersen