Chapel Springs, Lake Oconee | Neighborhood Guide

Chapel Springs sits on Lake Oconee in Putnam County, reached off Wards Chapel Road, with the gated entrance at Chapel Springs Drive. It is on the way to Waters Edge, the gated lakefront and equestrian neighborhood farther down Wards Chapel Road. The new Publix in Putnam County is about ten minutes out, and turning left on Old Phoenix Road NE points you toward Milledgeville and a considerably wider choice of shopping. See the rest of the lake’s communities on the Lake Oconee neighborhoods page. For the full picture of this stretch of the lake, see the Lake Oconee homes in Eatonton guide.

Chapel Springs has an active HOA with a fee currently at $750 per year, on the higher end for this side of the lake and a reflection of the subdivision’s amenities. The association maintains a neighborhood pool, a playground, an outdoor pavilion, and a private community boat ramp, and keeps a full website at chapelspringsga.com with useful information for residents.

You pass it on the way in. Ward’s Chapel AME Church sits on Wards Chapel Road just outside the subdivision entrance, and it is the reason this neighborhood is called what it is.

The site goes back to 1813, established for the Ward family and the people they enslaved. The congregation itself dates to the 1880s. Alice Walker’s great-great-grandfather belonged to the Ward Chapel Society in the late 1800s, and Walker herself, who grew up in Putnam County and went on to write The Color Purple, was baptized in this church in 1944. It was her childhood church home.

The building you see now is the third. The original burned in 1919 and its replacement burned in the 1940s, each rebuild paid for by the congregation itself. After years of disrepair, community members stabilized and rebuilt the current structure in 2015.

The small cemetery across the road holds the Walker family plot, including Alice Walker’s parents, Willie Lee Walker and Minnie Tallulah Grant. Both the church and the cemetery are stops on the Alice Walker driving tour published by Visit Eatonton.

As of 2025, sales of the most coveted lakefront homes in Chapel Springs broke past the $2 million mark, putting this subdivision in range with some of the finest non-golf communities on Lake Oconee. Combined with the gated entrance, walkable streets, and consistently well-kept homes throughout, Chapel Springs has built a reputation as one of the more polished addresses on the lake.