Union Hill

Bath, originally called Possum Walk, was a community on Farm Road 1374 eight miles west of Interstate Highway 45 in southwestern Walker County. The Union Hill Baptist Church was established there in 1872. The Possum Walk community changed its name to Bath when its post office was established in 1887; James H. Bell served as the first postmaster. Bath reported twenty-five residents in 1892 and forty in 1896. The Union Hill church building served as both a place of worship and a schoolhouse until a separate facility for the school was provided in 1899. Around 1900 two cotton gins, a gristmill, and a sawmill operated at Bath. The post office closed in 1905. In 1911 the community still had its school, which had seven grades, and the church. As late as 1936 Bath persisted as a community of scattered farm dwellings clustered around the school and church. By the early 1990s only the Union Hill Baptist Church and a cemetery remained.