Margo Oxendine

Bath County, Virginia (Images of America) Margo Oxendine

Named for its restorative mineral springs, Bath County has been a popular tourist destination since the mid-18th Century. Visitors, and those who call it home, are charmed by its bucolic beauty-rolling meadows, pristine rivers, and ancient, cozy mountains. Experience day-to-day life, as well as the allure of the springs and their adjacent grand hotels, by leafing through the past in this volume of 200 photographs, many never before published.

Visit "The Hot," "The Warm," "The Healing," Bath Alum and Millboro Springs as they once were. See the gentry who paid small fortunes to "take the waters," and the generations who served them with grace. Our breathtaking views may seem to have changed little through the years; these photos show just how different the view over Warm Springs Gap was a century ago, just how Hot Springs appeared when Main Street was barely more than a flower-filled field. Bath's proud, independent, industrious population is shown at work and play, at school and church, at home on the porch. Fabled, long-gone faces once again come into focus, while those still enjoying life here today are captured in childhood, or the glow of youth.