Good Spring Baptist Church & Cemetery

Good Spring Baptist Church & Cemetery is a small historic church and burial ground near the Maple Springs trailhead. The white, one-story frame church is 38 by 26 feet; the congregation began in 1842, but the building standing here dates to about 1900. Give it a few minutes if you want to understand the people who lived in this part of the park.

Before Good Spring, people in the Cade and Maple Springs area traveled about 10 miles to Nolin Baptist Church or roughly 65 miles to a church in Beaver Dam. Elders Jesse Moon, R.T. Gardner and William Skaggs organized the congregation in February 1842. By 1896–1900, it had the largest membership of any church in the Green River Association. A 1931 recollection describes an earlier log church heated by a fireplace, with worshippers gathering outdoors among the trees when the building filled.

In this rural area, churches brought people together for worship, weddings, funerals, baptisms, revivals, homecomings and grave-decoration days. Good Spring served families in Cade, Maple Springs and across the Green River. Its church and cemetery survived the park’s creation and remain the only physical reminder of the once-thriving Cade and Maple Springs community. Descendants have returned for homecomings, dinners and memorial gatherings.

The cemetery lies southwest of the church and dates to the early 19th century. It covers roughly 500 by 190 feet; most graves face east, with commercially made headstones, fieldstone markers and unmarked graves. Photograph the church and cemetery separately: the burial ground sits outside the church’s façade view.