Tsubaki Grand Shrine of America
Granite Falls, Washington
The first Shinto shrine built in the continental United States, a branch of the Mie Prefecture grand shrine on a riverbank in Washington State, which held its final ceremony in 2023 and closed.
Tsubaki Grand Shrine of America was established on the Pilchuck River near Granite Falls, Washington, as an overseas branch of Tsubaki Okami Yashiro in Mie Prefecture, one of Japan's oldest shrine lineages, and for nearly two decades it offered Shinto ritual, misogi purification, and cultural teaching on the American side of the Pacific, under a priest trained in the tradition. Its buildings, torii, and ceremonial life made it a genuine outlier: a working Shinto shrine on a forest river in the Pacific Northwest.
The shrine's final ceremony was held in June 2023, and its kami were formally transferred in 2024 to a British Columbia center, ending the Washington shrine's operation. The entry records the shrine as it was, because its history, the first of its kind in the continental United States, is part of the story of how Shinto traveled, and the closure is the kind of fact sacred-place entries exist to carry honestly.
Visiting
The shrine is closed. The Tsubaki Grand Shrine's historical site preserves the record; the kami now reside at the Shin Mei Spiritual Centre in British Columbia. No visits are possible at the Washington location.
Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tsubaki_Grand_Shrine_of_America_entrance.jpg), CC BY-SA 4.0.
Associated traditions & practices
Visitor stories