Oak Hill

Oak Hill was on the old Bastrop-McDade road four miles southwest of McDade in northern Bastrop County. The land was part of the Martin Walker grant on Piney Creek. Walker began selling part of his land in 1849, and the Oak Hill community developed. The earliest marked graves in the community cemetery are dated 1868, but other unmarked graves are probably several years older. In 1879 the Oak Hill school and church bought forty acres on which to build a new facility. The building was initially shared by Methodist Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Christian denominations, and in 1882 Baptist services began to be offered. Oak Hill was primarily a farming community, with cotton and corn grown as cash crops; vegetables and livestock were also raised, but mostly for subsistence. In 1905 the Oak Hill school had thirty-nine students and one teacher. When the county implemented a district system in 1907, Oak Hill became the focus of a common school district. In the early 1940s the United States government chose the area around Oak Hill as the site for Camp Swift, and residents had to move. Homes and businesses were sold, moved, torn down, or used as training targets. Though some of the land in the Oak Hill area was returned to its former owners in the late 1940s when the camp was reduced in size, the community was not rebuilt. Former residents established a cemetery association to repair and maintain the Oak Hill cemetery. The community name was not shown on county highway maps in the 1980s.