Camp Hill, AL

Camp Hill is a town in eastern Tallapoosa County, Alabama, along U.S. Route 280 and Alabama Route 50. Settlement began in the area around 1830, and older names included Burnt Bull and Ashbank before Camp Hill became the lasting name. The railroad arrived in 1870, bringing new movement through the town and helping local stores, banks, and service businesses grow. Camp Hill incorporated in 1895, by which point it had become a recognizable stop in the east-central Alabama landscape.

ATTRRivers Langley / CC BY-SA 4.0

Education gives Camp Hill another strong local connection. In 1898, Lyman Ward and Mary Louis Smith established the Southern Industrial Institute, which later became Lyman Ward Academy and is now Southern Preparatory Academy. The school began with a farm, classrooms, workshops, and student-built structures, and its campus remains part of the town's story. Camp Hill also carries the difficult memory of the 1931 attack on an Alabama Sharecroppers' Union meeting, when racial and labor violence shook the community. The railroad, academy, agricultural past, and that hard historical record all belong to the same Tallapoosa County town.