North Carolina's 122 Churches on the National Register of Historic Places

122 North Carolina churches in the Churches List directory stand on the National Register of Historic Places. The state's first listing from this directory's rolls is also one of America's oldest church buildings: Saint Thomas Episcopal Church in Bath, built in 1734 and listed November 20, 1970, the oldest surviving church building in North Carolina.

The county spread is unusually even. Cumberland and Buncombe counties lead with 9 register-listed churches each, followed by Davidson with 8 and a cluster of counties at 7, a distribution that reflects North Carolina's dispersed small-city geography: no single metro dominates the state's historic church stock the way Wayne County dominates Michigan's.

The complete list of North Carolina churches on the National Register

The table lists all 122 North Carolina 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 North Carolina churches enter the National Register?

North Carolina's listings peaked in the 1980s with 43 entries, driven by the state preservation office's county-by-county architectural inventories of that decade. The 1990s added 30 more. Since 2000 the pace has slowed to roughly one or two per year, with 6 listings arriving since 2020, most tied to African American church history surveys in the eastern counties.

Which North Carolina 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 (16,249 North Carolina congregations as of June 11, 2026) against the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places database by building location and name. 122 matches hold as of the snapshot date; the earliest North Carolina church listing dates to 1970. 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: Baptist churches in North Carolina maps the 5,772 congregations of the state's dominant tradition, including 22 with register-listed buildings. The North Carolina state page lists all 16,249 North Carolina churches in the directory.