Saint Sava Serbian Orthodox Church

About

Saint Sava Serbian Orthodox Church at 724 North Main Street in Jackson holds the distinction of being the first Serbian Orthodox church built in North America. In 1893, Hieromonk Sebastian Dabovic traveled from San Francisco to Jackson and discovered a large community of Serbian miners — at the time nearly one-third of the town's population — working the Kennedy and Argonaut gold mines. The miners, who had come from Herzegovina, Montenegro, and the Bay of Kotor, completed the brick church in one year. It was consecrated on December 4, 1894, by Bishop Nikolai Ziorov of the Aleutians and Alaska, with Father Dabovic serving as the first parish priest. The church was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. Its tower — originally an onion-dome cupola characteristic of Eastern Orthodox architecture — was replaced with a straight tower in 1930, but the interior retains its stained glass windows and icons. The adjacent Saint Sava Cemetery holds the graves of early parishioners and Gold Rush-era prospectors, along with a monument to the eleven Serbian miners who perished in the catastrophic 1922 Argonaut Mine disaster that claimed 47 lives total. Saint Sava remains an active parish within the Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Western America. Visitors are welcome to contact the parish to arrange a visit.

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