Based upon the account of Knut Olsen Hastvedt and historical sources

The emigrants took a riverboat up the Mississippi from New Orleans.  Depending on the size of the craft, the group would have transferred to a smaller boat at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio River near Cairo, Illinois, at the confluence of the Missouri and the Mississippi near St. Louis, and/or at Alton, Illinois where the Illinois River joins the Mississippi.  After taking the Illinois River to La Salle, they made the final leg of the journey to the Koshkonong settlement, a distance of approximately 100 miles, by wagon. 

The Fox River settlement, located in La Salle County, was the first permanent Norwegian settlement in the Midwest.  It provided a comfortable and familiar rest stop after the long journey across the Atlantic and up the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers.

The Fox River Settlement

The first permanent Norwegian settlement in the United States was located at Kendall, New York. Cleng Peerson walked from Western New York through Michigan and on to Illinois in search of a new settlement area. When he returned to Kendall, he reported that he had found a land of milk and honey in the Fox River Valley of Illinois, seventy five miles southwest of the then tiny village of Chicago.  Norwegian settlers started arriving in the Fox River Settlement in 1835. It would become the second Norwegian settlement in America and the first in the Midwest.

An Excerpt from La Salle County, Illinois History    p. 13-14

Translated by Olaf Kringhaug from 'Nordmændene i Amerika' by Martin Ulvestad

History Book Company’s Forlag, Minneapolis, MN 1907

p. 13-14

   Elling Eielsen, who came from Norway to Fox River in 1839, immediately began holding meetings there and a meeting house was erected that year. This was the first Norwegian meeting house in America. It was later used as a church. The aforementioned was urged by some of his friends to get ordained as a priest. The ordination was conducted by F. A. Hoffman, D.D., a German Lutheran priest at Duncan's Grove (at Chicago) on the 3rd October 1843. However, Elling preferred to be seen as a lay preacher, which actually he was - in the mode of Hans Nilsen Hauge. He was a zealous and skilled preacher - and was nearly always on the road - with his axe, compass, coffee pot, rain clothes etc. Many a night he slept under open skies, often surrounded by Indians, to whom he was a good friend. He visited many a lonely Norwegian with the Word, and he took part in many a battle (in the clerical sense) and was an example during his long efforts in the Norwegian settlements in America. He was born in Voss the 19th September 1804 and died in Chicago, Ill. in 1883.