122 Cattle Creek Road
City Directories and History: (Cattle Creek United Methodist Church and Campground) Cattle Creek Campground, situated near the Orangeburg County towns of Rowesville, Bowman and Branchville, consists of thirty-six cabins, called “tents,” arranged in a wide semi-circle around an open pavilion structure known as the “stand” or “tabernacle.” At the northwest end of the camp-meeting ground is Cattle Creek
Cattle Creek Campground
United Methodist Church; between the church and the tabernacle is a cemetery. The camp burned in 1898 and was gradually rebuilt over the next several decades. The Campground is one of only three Methodist camp-meeting grounds remaining in South Carolina. Significant for its association with the early history of Methodism in South Carolina, Cattle Creek Campground is also notable as a surviving example of a social institution important in rural America during the nineteenth century. The tents, so named because the first campers and worshippers stayed in cloth tents and lean-to’s made from limbs and branches, are built of rough, unpainted lumber, have gable roofs covered with metal or composition shingles, and generally measure about twenty feet by thirty feet. Each tent contains two rooms downstairs with dirt floors and one or two rooms upstairs, which are reached by a small stairway or ladder. All of the tents have porches with shed roofs. The cooking is done outdoors at the rear of the tent over an open fire. In the center of the campground is the “stand,” an open shed about fifty-six feet by eighty-one feet with a metal, gabled hip roof. Listed in the National Register May 19, 1983.
(Courtesy of South Carolina Department of Archives and History)
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R&R HISTORY LINK: CAMP WELFARE MEETING SITE – FAIRFIELD CO SC
R&R HISTORY LINK: ANOTHER CAMP GROUND MEETING SITE
R&R HISTORY LINK: BOWMAN TOPO QUAD – 1921
R&R HISTORY LINK: NATIONAL REGISTER – IMAGE(S)
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