Bath County was created on December 14, 1790, by an act of the Virginia General Assembly from portions of Augusta, Botetourt, and Greenbrier counties, and a stone courthouse and log jail were erected at the intersection of the Warm Springs Mountain Turnpike and the Jackson River Turnpike in the village of Bath Court House. In 1842, a new brick courthouse and jail replaced the earlier buildings, and although some residents wanted the courthouse moved to Germantown one-half mile away from the busy area around the springs, it remained at the springs site. During the Civil War, Northern troops used the courthouse as a headquarters, and after the war the building was renovated and continued to serve the county for another 40 years. In 1906, a court order required the Bath County Board of Supervisors to build a new courthouse and jail, the old buildings were auctioned off and became a hotel, and the cupola from the brick courthouse was later placed on the former Warm Springs Episcopal Church built in 1854 on Church Road southwest of the springs. In 1908, a new two-story brick courthouse designed by architect Frank Pierce Milburn was built on a hillside overlooking Germantown, later renamed Warm Springs, but it burned in 1912. The present courthouse in Warm Springs was designed by the T.J. Collins and Sons architectural firm and completed in 1914 in the Classical Revival style with a wide front porch supported by six columns and a central domed bell and clock tower whose original bell remains in use, and a two-story rear wing was added in 1980. The law office of John W. Stephenson was moved from near the old courthouse by the Warm Springs Pools to the new courthouse site in Germantown, and today that building houses the Bath County Historical Society.