Bethel Lutheran Church

Front: This church, organized in 1762 by German colonists, is one of the first Lutheran congregations in the Dutch Fork region. Incorporated in 1788 as “the German Lutheran Church of Bethel on High Hill Creek,” it first met in a log church 3.5 mi. S, near the juncture of that creek and the Saluda River. It built later churches ca. 1800, in 1843, and in 1881 further up High Hill Creek. Reverse: An original member of the South Carolina Lutheran Synod when the synod was organized in 1824, Bethel was forced to move when Lake Murray was constructed. In 1929 it merged with Mt. Vernon Lutheran Church, organized in 1893 at White Rock, to form a “new” Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church. This Gothic Revival church, designed by J.B. Urquhart of Columbia, was dedicated in 1930.