Center Hill

The Handbook of Texas gives Center Hill a second name, Corinth, and places it a mile and a half west of Kennard in east central Houston County. It says the settlement grew up around the Corinth school, established in 1857. In the mid-1930s the community had a school, a church, a cemetery and a number of houses. After the school was consolidated with Kennard's, only a church and the cemetery remained by the mid-1960s. The Handbook calls Center Hill a dispersed rural community in the early 1990s and counts 105 residents in 2000.

What the plaque says

Center Hill Early settlers in this part of Houston County established homes in the nearby communities of Corinth, Old Zion, and Randolph. Community life centered around farming and church activities. Settlers met together for worship at the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in Corinth. A building erected there in the late 1850s served as both church and school for the surrounding communities until it was destroyed by fire in 1881. Sensitive to the need for a new church structure to serve area residents, George W. and Loucetta A. Julian donated three acres at this site in 1883 for a new Methodist church building. Because of its central location, it was named Center Hill. A community school, named Center Ridge, also met in the church building. A separate school structure was erected one mile northeast in 1914 and continued in service until 1935, when the school was merged with the Kennard School District. Center Hill maintained its ties to the earlier communities, and area citizens continue to use the cemetery established at Corinth in 1864. Descendants of early settlers remain in the area. (1990)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Caddo Mounds State Historic Site — 16 mi
  Three earthen mounds of an ancestral Caddo village and ceremonial center on the old El Camino Real, settled about A.D. 800 and still sacred to Caddo people, with a grass house and visitor center.
• Texas State Railroad Excursion Train — 31 mi
  A round trip of about 25 miles of track between the Palestine and Rusk depots through the Piney Woods, on a line built by prison labor and reopened as a tourist railroad in 1976.

More markers nearby

• Randolph Community — 2.2 mi
• Cornith Cemetery — 2.2 mi
• Kennard — 4.0 mi
• Former Rosenwald School — 4.1 mi