Sturgeon’s 1881 Church Moves to Boone History Village

A 145-year-old country church from Sturgeon, a small town in northern Boone County, has a new address: Nifong Park in Columbia, where it joins the Boone History Village as the historic collection’s first new building in more than 15 years.

Locust Grove Baptist Church, built in 1881, left Sturgeon strapped to a hauling truck Wednesday night, Oct. 21, heading about 20 miles south on U.S. 63 before exiting at Grindstone Parkway and arriving in Columbia shortly before midnight. The Boone County History and Culture Center, which runs the village, says it plans to have the roughly 30-by-40-foot building restored and open as a small wedding venue by spring 2027.

Why Save an Empty Country Church?

Locust Grove held its last Sunday service in 1953 and has stood empty in Sturgeon ever since, though the church served northern Boone County for more than 72 years before that. Chris Campbell, executive director of the Boone County Historical Society, which operates the History and Culture Center, said the building was always about more than worship. “It was built not just for Sunday services,” Campbell said, describing it as a gathering place for picnics and community life. He said the center’s goal is “to interpret our history in a way that’s inclusive for everybody.”

Dennis Kent, a longtime former president of the Locust Grove Baptist Cemetery Association whose family has been tied to the church since its founding, said he’s glad it finally has a future. He’d been hoping to see the long-vacant building find a new purpose for years. Campbell said the Historical Society hadn’t had the money to move the church until Eugene Gruender, trustee of the estate of his late friend Linda Humes, provided the funding in 2025.

What Happens to the Building — and the Cemetery?

Restoration began the day after the move, with a basement excavated beneath the church to store part of the center’s collection — more than 22,000 three-dimensional artifacts along with hundreds of thousands of photographs. Once finished, the church will get electric lighting and air conditioning, and it’ll sit next to the Ryland House, a late-Victorian home from the 1890s, with open land to the west for wedding receptions.

The church’s cemetery, with markers for nearly 300 graves, stays behind on the original Sturgeon site, where the Locust Grove Baptist Cemetery Association will continue caring for it.

It’s the kind of rescue that doesn’t always happen in time — Boone County is also watching Katy Station’s uncertain future downtown, where preservationists are racing the opposite problem: a historic building that’s still standing but with nowhere guaranteed to go. The Boone County Historical Society, which is leading the Locust Grove project, also runs the county’s History Makers Hall of Fame, honoring the people and institutions it considers worth remembering alongside the buildings.