Kentucky's 92 Churches on the National Register of Historic Places

92 Kentucky churches in the Churches List directory hold National Register of Historic Places listings. The state's first church listing from this directory's rolls came April 10, 1972: Trinity Episcopal Church in Owensboro, an 1875 Gothic Revival sanctuary by the Ohio River.

Jefferson County (Louisville) holds 17 of the 92 listings, the only large concentration; the rest scatter across the commonwealth at one to five per county, from Warren County's 5 around Bowling Green to the bluegrass counties of Fayette, Boyle, and Scott. That scatter is the Kentucky pattern: the state's historic churches sit in county-seat towns and crossroads hamlets more than in its cities.

The complete list of Kentucky churches on the National Register

The table lists all 92 Kentucky congregations in this directory whose buildings hold National Register of Historic Places listings as of June 11, 2026. Click a column to sort; the county menu filters the list.

When did Kentucky churches enter the National Register?

Kentucky concentrated its church listings early: 32 entries in the 1970s and 47 in the 1980s, then only 6 in the 1990s and none at all in the 2000s. The 1980s peak follows the Kentucky Heritage Council's statewide survey program, which documented rural religious architecture county by county before the program's funding narrowed. Listings resumed modestly with 5 in the 2010s and 2 since 2020.

Which Kentucky counties hold the most register-listed churches?

Where the register-listed churches stand: the map

How this list was assembled

The list joins the Churches List directory (6,768 Kentucky congregations as of June 11, 2026) against the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places database by building location and name. 92 matches hold as of the snapshot date; the earliest Kentucky church listing dates to 1972. A register listing covers the building, not the congregation, and some listed buildings house congregations younger than the walls. Corrections are applied through the corrections page.

Related reading in The Letter: single-parish towns covers the rural-county church pattern that defines much of Kentucky's register list, and Tennessee's 113 register-listed churches continues the upland-South register story across the border. The Kentucky state page lists all 6,768 Kentucky churches.