Humboldt's Hospitals
One of the first things groups of humans have to do is to decide how to deal with the sick and injured. This can mean learning about healing herbs and berries and deciding who has the best natural or supernatural healing skills and so can be designated the group shaman or doctor.
This is equally true for prehistoric or historic times. The indigenous tribes of the Humboldt area had long accomplished this, and when Euro-Americans settled here they did so as well.
Medical doctors were among those early settlers. Dr. Jonathan Clark, whose name still appears on a local street and development district, arrived here in 1850 and immediately established a medical practice. Three years afterwards, he was appointed to the medical staff at Fort Humboldt and regularly traveled to other area forts. In addition to practicing medicine, Clark went on to be elected county Supervisor and then state Assemblyman.
In the early years, the physicians that settled in Humboldt County ran their practices out of their own homes or established small-scale hospitals.
Records from the 19th and early 20th centuries show a number of small private hospitals appearing around the county. Some were for specific cliental such as the Marine Hospital at H and 17th Streets in Eureka which cared for injured sailors. The Sequoia Hospital at Eureka’s H and 6th Streets was founded in 1906 primarily to serve timber workers and their families, and a nursing school was soon added. Similarly, the hospital in Scotia was dedicated to the medical needs of that Pacific Lumber Company town. Some area facilities had a particular medical focus such as the Arcata Sanatorium that specialized in treating alcohol and drug addiction in the 1890s.
No question that most of the employment in early Humboldt County was physically hazardous. One of the first priorities of the newly formed International Brotherhood of Woodsmen and Mill Workers was to create a hospital. In 1906, that hospital was opened at H and Harris Streets. At first, union members subscribed to a yearly ticket entitling only them to hospital care, but after some agitation this privilege was extended to family members. By 1917, a nursing school was established there as well. The facility kept expanding, and a separate tuberculosis structure was added in the 1920s.
In 1931 the name was changed to General Hospital, signaling the facility’s expanding support and cliental. After several expansions and remodelings at that site, General Hospital moved to the larger Humboldt County Hospital on Harrison Street in 1978. That earlier hospital had originally been established in the 1890s and had built its Harrison street facility in 1930.
An additional factor in Humboldt’s complex hospital picture came in 1909 when two brothers, Dr. Charles and Dr. Curtis Falk opened a small facility at Eureka’s Trinity and F Streets. It closed when the remaining partner went off to fight in World War I, but in 1920 it was sold to the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Orange. The Sisters had been active in assisting with the 1918 flu epidemic and recognized the importance of medical training which they then facilitated. The current, though much expanded, St. Joseph’s Hospital on Harrison was opened in 1954. Then in the year 2000, St. Joseph’s Hospital system acquired General Hospital and continued to expand facilities and acquire private practices.
The story of Humboldt’s hospitals is extensive and complex, covering Arcata, Fortuna, Hoopa, Ferndale, Garberville, Samoa and other communities. It can’t be fully summarized here, but extensive information is available at the Humboldt County Historical Society. Appropriately those archives are housed in Eureka’s Barnum House at H and 8th Streets, which itself served as a doctor’s office and small hospital in the early 1900s. As always, when health conditions permit, the public is invited to come there and learn more about Humboldt’s history, medical and otherwise.