New Chapel Hill, TX

New Chapel Hill is a Smith County city on State Highway 64, about eight miles southeast of Tyler. The 2020 census counted 620 residents. Chapel Hill Independent School District serves the city, and the surrounding map is a mix of homes, farms, school routes, and roads toward Tyler. It is part of the Tyler metropolitan area, but the place still feels like a small school-and-farm community on the edge of a larger East Texas center.

Settlement in the area began by the late 1800s, and the Chapel Hill community took shape in 1945 when Bascom, Murph, and other school districts consolidated. The name reportedly came from a church and cemetery on higher ground. A new school and Baptist church helped give the community its center, and it incorporated as New Chapel Hill in 1968. The city has a mayor but no council, and its local mix remains recognizable: school, church, homes, small businesses, and farm roads between the town and Tyler.