A Gallery of Historic Camp Meetings
I’ve only visited a handful of old camp meetings – Beech Springs, Epworth, Greer Baptist Camp Meeting, Shady Grove, and Indian Springs. Greer only has a tabernacle and no camp facilities. Beech Springs has changed so much from its original plan that it doesn’t really qualify. However, Epworth, Shady Grove, and Indian Springs are of historic interest to me.
As I’ve mentioned in other posts, the tents were often passed down through families, and each family was responsible for keeping up their tent. Accommodations are rustic, at best.
I wanted to see how many more of these campgrounds there were, but I had to set some parameters. I excluded modern camp meetings. These included meetings held in convention-like facilities or in churches. I included Beech Springs only because of its connection to our family. I also included a handful of camp meetings that only had a tabernacle but no camping facilities, such as the Greer Camp Meeting.
With these parameters, I found nearly 120 camp meetings across the US. Most of these are east of the Mississippi, but there are a few out west. I was surprised at how many there were in Pennsylvania and New England. In a couple of these towns grew up around the camp meeting and actually subsumed and replaced the camp. I only included Ocean Grove NJ because of its historic tents and Great Auditorium. There was still an identifiable camp meeting element there.
I plotted the locations on a Google Map.
In Google Earth I captured an overhead image of many, but not all of these camp meetings. Those appear on the next pages…
Fascinating stuff. Strange that this post would appear now. I have a Book on my iPad that I downloaded from the library of Congress talking book program. It is a history of Pentecostalism, and for some reason I started reading it this morning. I have never studied the movements at all, and was fascinated to see its roots in methodism. And I also was fascinated by the effort of the author to trace similar occurrences back through history to the second century or so.
At one point, there was something called I think the fourth fold gospel. It was like four emphases. It was interesting to me to see what was chosen and what was not for emphasis. I suppose that is true in any church organization. I would have thought that discipleship would have been a major emphasis, given the Methodist focus on something very similar.
Right near the Cattle Creek Campground, near Bowman SC, is an old cemetery with at least one grave dating to the Revolutionary War. The original marker is there and i believe someone made a new one with the inscription regarding the guy buried there. He was home on leave but was capture by the Tories and killed. Note: While there is a cemetery on the campground premises, that’s not the one. The really old one is in the woods, not far from the campground as i recall. I believe there are signs directing you to it.
Cool! Im hoping to visit Cattle Creek next time I’m down that way. I’ll see if I can find it.
Oddly enough, I too was a PK in a Pentecostal family. The Church of God Camp Meeting in Wimauma, Florida, used to be known as “The Grandaddy of ‘Em All.” That was especially true when it was an open-air tabernacle (up until around the 1980s). There would be, I suppose, about 5000 people there. Most were inside, but many would sit in their lawn chairs around the tabernacle (there were speakers mounted so they could hear).
Of course, it was the Florida summer, so we always wanted to air condition the place. Then leadership tore it down and built a new one that was air conditioned. Alas, something was lost. I think that, before, only the most fervent folks would attend in the torrid heat. But air conditioning seemed to attract many who likely were not as dedicated. Maybe. In any case, while it’s still wonderful, it is not like it once way.