LA BAHIA, TEXAS. La Bahia is on the West Fork of Mill Creek a quarter mile from State Highway 237 and fourteen miles southwest of Brenham in southwestern Washington County. It was named for the La Bahia Road, a main county road that passes through the community. The site was settled by German immigrants in the 1870s and flourished briefly in the 1870s and 1880s. A post office was opened there in 1879, but the town's development was slow, largely because of competition from nearby Burton and Carmine. In 1893 the La Bahia post office was closed, and a number of the community's families moved to larger towns. La Bahia, however, remained a center for the surrounding farm community. In the 1930s the La Bahia Dance Hall attracted visitors from Brenham and other nearby towns. A turnvereinqv organized in La Bahia on July 5, 1879, was still active in 1988.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Annie Maud Avis, ed., History of Burton (Burton, Texas, 1974). Betty Cantrell Plummer, Historic Homes of Washington County (San Marcos, Texas: Rio Fresco, 1971).
