BATH HISTORIC
DISTRICT

Nearly 30 years after colonial travelers, including a teenaged George Washington, pitched tents and “took the waters” in stone-lined pools, the Virginia Legislature in 1776 established a town called Bath on 50 acres around the warm mineral springs. The legislative act called for building “convenient houses for accommodating numbers of infirm persons, who frequent those springs yearly, for the recovery of their health.” The official name of the municipality remains Bath although the world knows it by the Post Office name of Berkeley Springs.

A walking tour traces the history of dozens of historic buildings within the 18th-century town limits beginning with the founders and buyers of the first lots sold in 1777 including George and Samuel Washington as well as three signers of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, two Revolutionary War generals and a half dozen members of the Continental Congress. The colonial elite clearly selected Bath as a fashionable summer escape. Berkeley Castle, overlooking the town, was built as an elaborate summer cottage in 1885 and is once more a private residence.