Located about five miles west of Tomball on FM 2920, Rosehill was first settled by P.W. Rose as the Spring Creek community around the year 1836, according to the Texas State Historical Association. The town's moniker changed to Rose Hill in 1892 and is commonly referred to today as Rosehill.
A decade later, German immigrant Johann Heinrich Theis arrived from Galveston and settled 200 acres of land in Spring Creek. Theis and three other German families founded one of the state's oldest Lutheran congregations, Salem Lutheran Church, in 1852, according to the association.
Dating back more than two centuries, the farming community also largely influenced the town's culture. With 120 years of history, Weinberg's Rosehill Farm is one of the oldest active agricultural sites in the area today, owner Marvin Earl "Bud" Weinberg Jr. said. The farm was originally founded by Weinberg's great-great grandmother who traveled to Rosehill from Germany in the late 1880s.
"I've been doing this for about 40 years," Weinberg said. "It used to be pretty quiet out here. If you heard a car on the road, it would be several miles away—now it's a roar. [Rosehill] used to be all old families and some of the tenants are still here—everything was agricultural land."
The farm grows and sells a variety of crops to the public, such as corn, squash, watermelon, peas, tomatoes, cucumbers and sweet potatoes, Weinberg said.
"We get a lot of new customers, and some people come in and say, 'I didn't even know you were here,'" Weinberg said. "We have other people that have been coming for probably 20 or 25 years. If people have never had real fresh, homegrown produce, that's something they would be missing out on."
Over the years, the town has developed a separate identity from Tomball by establishing its own fire department in December 1963, said Lee Sulecki, assistant fire chief and public information officer. The Rosehill Fire Department serves 20,000 to 25,000 residents within a 40-mile radius from Telge Road on the east side to Roberts Road on the west and responds to about 1,000 calls annually, Sulecki said.
"[Rosehill Fire Department] was started by a group of citizens that lived out here," he said. "They lost a house to a fire, and the closest fire department was in Tomball. [The group] met at an old hardware store and wrote out the first bylaws on butcher paper."
About 10 years ago, the fire department switched from using an all-volunteer group for service to staffing 30 full-time firefighters and 15 volunteers in 2014. Rosehill Fire Department has three stations to serve residents and anticipates the need for three or four more in the future to keep up with a growing service demand, Sulecki said.
Since the area is unincorporated, the fire department receives funding from property taxes through Emergency Services District No. 21 for fire services and ESD No. 3 for EMS operations, Sulecki said.
For about 25 years, Sulecki has worked with the Rosehill Fire Department and has seen the community grow and change from a primarily agricultural area to a flourishing town with several businesses.
"Some of us have been out here forever, and we're always going to be part of the community," Sulecki said. "That's how we try to treat people, and that's our legacy out here."