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The '''Holy Trinity Chapel''' at Fort Ross, California, was part of the Russian colony on the northern coast of California, above San Francisco, during the first half of the nineteenth century. The [[chapel]] was used by the Russians and Aleuts who were members of the colony until it was sold in 1841. The Fort Ross site, including the chapel, is now a part of the California State Park System.

Orthodox Christianity was part of the lives of the Russian, Creole, and Aleut colonists. In early 1820s they expressed their intentions to build a [[chapel]] dedicated to St. [[Nicholas of Myra|Nicholas]] at their own expense. The chapel was built within the walls of "Ross Fortress." The Christians of the colony were helped by the officers and crews of three Russian Navy ships in 1823-1824 who donated a considerable sum for the proposed chapel. The chapel was completed in 1825 and was used by the colonists for reader services. (However, the [[Russian Orthodox Church Sites in Alaska Survey]], compiled in the 1970s indicates that a chapel dedicated to St. Helen was constructed already in 1812. Whether this is the same chapel is unknown.)

With the departure of the Ross colonists in 1842, the fort and its chapel came under the care of successive owners. In the spring of 1897, Bishop [[Nicholas (Ziorov) of Warsaw|Nicholas]], Fr. [[Sebastian (Dabovich)|Sebastian Dabovich]], and reader Paul Grepachevsky visited Fort Ross, and were dismayed at the condition the sacred sites were in, noting that they couldn't enter the chapel since it was now used as a barn and that only "insignificant remains" of the cemetery were to be found. In 1903, the two and a half acres comprising the fort, chapel and other buildings were sold to the California Historical Landmarks League, which deeded the property to the State of California in 1906. In 1905, eight years after the visit by Bishop Nicholas and company to Fort Ross, Bishop [[Tikhon of Moscow]] and Fr. Theodore Pashkovsky (the future [[Theophilus (Pashkovsky) of San Francisco|Metropolitan Theophilus]]) visited, and according to them, the situation at the fort had improved, noting, for instance, on the "cleanliness of the chapel". Also in 1906, the great San Andreas fault earthquake occurred severely damaging the buildings in the area of the old colony. The , as the San Andreas fault passes very close to Fort Ross. The chapel itself was largely destroyed, the only parts of the building surviving being the roof and the towers on the roof. During the following years these buildings, including the chapel, were restored. The area passed to the administration of the California Parks and Recreation Department that now controls the use of the fort.  The main chapel restoration took place between 1915 and 1917, though mistakes that were made were corrected between 1955 and 1957. Holy Trinity Chapel was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1969, due to it being "architecturally significant as a rare U.S. example of a log church constructed on a Russian quadrilateral plan". Unfortunately on October 5, 1970, an accidental fire burned the church to the ground, causing the chapel itself to be de-listed in 1971. A complete reconstruction was built in 1973. However, the whole Fort Ross settlement retains its National Historic Landmark status. The area of the Fort Ross Historic Park has through the twentieth century been enlarged to 3,277 acres as of 1992.

*Hector Chevigny, ''Russian America - The Great Alaskan Venture 1741-1867'', The Viking Press, New York, 1965 *[https://www.nps.gov/nhl/find/withdrawn/fortross.htm Fort Ross Chapel] National Park Service page*[http://npgallery.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/64000002.pdf National Register of Historic Places survey on Russian Orthodox Churches & Historic Sites in Alaska], (citing Bishop [[Gregory (Afonsky) of Sitka]]'s ''A History of the Orthodox Church in America (1794-1917)'' Kodiak, St. Herman's Theological Seminary, 1977)