Orange Hill

Orange Hill was a rural community on the east bank of the San Bernard River seven miles southwest of Sealy in far southwestern Austin County. Anglo-American settlement in the vicinity began in the late 1830s, but the town itself was founded between 1900 and 1910 at a pumping station on the San Bernard River. The town soon became a station on a spur of the Cane Belt Railroad between Sealy and Beard. A post office operated from 1910 until 1917. About this time the pumping plant was abandoned due to an unreliable water supply, and the town declined rapidly. No population figures were available, and by the mid-twentieth century only a few scattered farm dwellings and the nearby Orange Hill gas field remained in the area.