The roots of Dana College are in Trinity Seminary and the United Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church. In 1884 Danish Lutheran pioneers established Trinity at Blair, Nebraska, for the purpose of training men for the parish ministry. Reverend A. M. Andersen, founder of the institution, began teaching seminary courses in his home. Two years later, the first permanent building on the campus was completed. The main emphasis during those early days was on theology and, although some academic courses were offered, they were taught primarily as a background for theological study.

The need for additional academic courses was recognized but not fulfilled until 1899 when the Danish College at Elk Horn, Iowa, was merged with the Blair school. The result was the establishment of Dana College as a separate educational institution.

Dana and Trinity operated as a twofold institution of the UDELC which was renamed the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in 1944, and shared the same campus in Blair until 1956. As plans for the merger of the UELC, the Evangelical Lutheran Church and the American Lutheran Church became more definite, it was decided to move Trinity to the campus of Wartburg Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa. Following the merger of these three church bodies in 1961, Dana assumed her place as one of the eleven senior colleges of the new American Lutheran Church.

In 1987, The American Lutheran Church joined with the Lutheran Church in America and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches to create the new Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Dana is now a part of the Nebraska Synod of that new church body.

Today Dana enjoys a unique position within the Church and among colleges and universities in America as one of only two post-secondary educational institutions in America to be founded by Danish people.