Saint Sava Serbian Orthodox Church

Saint Sava Serbian Orthodox Church stands at 724 North Main Street in Jackson and 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. He encouraged them to build a church, and the miners, who had come from Herzegovina, Montenegro, and the Bay of Kotor, completed the brick structure 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 listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986 and remains an active parish within the Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Western America. 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. Visitors are welcome to contact the parish to arrange a visit.