title: Bath, Michigan
text: # Bath, Michigan
  
  Bath is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Clinton County in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is located in Bath Charter Township. As of the 2010 census, the CDP had a population of 2,083.
  
  ## History
  
  Bath was platted in 1864.
  
  The community of Bath was listed as a newly-organized census-designated place for the 2010 census, meaning it now has officially defined boundaries and population statistics for the first time.
  
  American supercentenarian Irene Dunham was born in Bath.
  
  ### Bath School disaster
  
  On May 18, 1927, in what became known as the Bath School disaster, Andrew Kehoe, a farmer and local school board member angry over losing an election for town clerk and under notice for foreclosure, killed his wife, detonated bombs in his house and farm buildings, and at the same time set off a bomb in the consolidated school. He drove to the school in a truck rigged with more explosives, which he detonated next to the school superintendent. In all, Kehoe killed 44 people, 38 of them children, and himself, in the worst school mass murder in U.S. history. Only half of the 1,000 pounds (450 kg) of explosives set under the school went off, probably greatly lowering the death toll. Thirty-eight of the 314 students, three teachers, the superintendent, the postmaster, and a local farmer assisting at the scene were killed. Most of the deceased were students from second to sixth grade. Fifty-eight others were injured.
  
  ## Geography
  
  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of 5.94 square miles (15.38 $km^2),$ of which 5.74 square miles (14.87 $km^2)$ is land and 0.20 square miles (0.52 $km^2)$ (3.37%) is water.
  
  