Mount Tabor Lutheran Church

Shenandoah Valley circuit-riding preacher Paul Henkel formed Mount Tabor Lutheran Church about 1785, several miles to the east. It shared a log building with St. John's, a Lutheran and Reformed union congregation. Under the direction of David Frederick Bittle, the Mount Tabor congregation moved here in 1838 and built a brick church within the current cemetery. In 1842 Bittle and Christopher C. Baughman organized a preparatory school for boys in the church parsonage about a mile west. The school became the Virginia Collegiate Institute in 1845. It moved to Salem in 1847, where it became Roanoke College in 1853. Construction of the present church building was completed in 1889.