After the opening of what is now eastern Iowa to American settlement in 1832, the town of Flint Hills was established the following year along the shores of the Mississippi River.

Jackson Kemper, Missionary Bishop of the Northwest, met an attorney named David Rorer, on the steamboat Olive Branch.

[3] The town's name had been changed to Burlington in 1838 and the bishop established a mission of the Episcopal Church the same year.

John Bachelder from Rhode Island volunteered to serve the station and on March 15, 1839, he held the first service in Old Zion Church, Burlington's only religious building at that time.

Christ Church was designed by Burlington architect Charles A. Dunham in the Romanesque Revival style.

The structure also features a unique round tower that terminates in a square belfry, and it is capped with a high pitched gabled roof.

With the exception of a dormer on the north side, the church building's exterior was completely restored after the 1973 fire.