PRINCE — Completion of a rail line through the coal-rich New River Gorge in 1873 set the stage for a decades-long boom that briefly transformed into an industrial landscape the remote stretch of canyon at the heart of what is now America’s newest national park.
Ten years after the C&O Railway began shipping New River coal to factories from the Eastern seaboard to the Ohio River Valley, the Gorge had become a beehive of human activity. By the late 1880s, a newly built mining, coke-making or sawmill community, mostly accessible only by rail, could be found every half-mile through much of the 53-mile length of the canyon.
With no end in sight to the flood of workers pouring into the Gorge in hopes of bettering their lives while helping fuel America’s industrial engine, the West Virginia Legislature decided it was time to offer a degree of protection to those working in the fast-growing but inherently dangerous mining industry.
In 1899, the Legislature authorized construction of three hospitals serving sick or injured miners in the state’s three most active coalfields — Fairmont to the north, Pocahontas to the southwest and the New River Gorge.
Miners Hospital No. 3 was completed in Fairmont in October 1900, while Miners Hospital No. 1 in Welch began serving patients in January 1902.
Miners Hospital No. 2 began operation in December 1901 at the tiny New River Gorge lumbering community of McKendree, home to only 44 people, according to the 1880 census.
According to a National Park Service history of the Gorge, McKendree was chosen as the site “because Joseph Beury, the influential coal operator of Quinnimont, wanted the hospital in that location.”
Of several proposed sites for the Gorge miners’ hospital, McKendree was the one nearest Beury’s mining ventures. Beury donated the 6.5 acres on which the hospital was built, along with a five-year supply of coal to provide it with heat.
The new hospital took shape on a relatively level bench of land about 100 feet above the New River, along the C&O main line, which provided access to all Gorge coal mines. According to a 1910 report by the West Virginia Board of Control, the state agency that then oversaw state hospitals, prisons and universities, the site was “far removed from the smoke and filth of the mines and any disturbing saloon influences.” Thus, it was “ideal” for the healthful recovery of patients.
Three stories tall, the red brick hospital contained 42 patient beds in two ground-floor wards — one for Black miners and the other for whites. Offices and nurses’ and surgeons’ quarters were found on the second floor, while the top floor housed an operating theater, sterilizing room and private rooms used by white female patients.
Miners received medical care free of charge, as did railroad workers and disabled children from the area. Other patients also were admitted but were required to pay a medical fee, which in the hospital’s early days was $1 per day. Immediately after the hospital began operating, all patient beds were occupied.
During its first, year, 77% of McKendree’s patients were miners. Burns accounted for the most common injuries, although 30 cases involving gunshot wounds also were treated. On average, the hospital’s two doctors, one nurse and eight aides handled 45 major operations a month, many of them amputations. During the hospital’s second and third years, the number of patients served more than doubled.
To ease pressure on McKendree’s staff, the hospital opened a nursing school in 1910. After a two-moth probationary period, nurse trainees worked the wards during the day and attended classes at night in exchange for room, board and a small stipend. The program was open only to white nursing students.
Nurses who completed their training at McKendree were well regarded by those in the medical community and had no trouble finding employment in less remote locations, according to a National Park Service history of the site.
After the nursing school was established, the hospital’s campus began to grow, starting with a nurses’ dormitory and tennis court, a superintendent’s residence, a boarding house for employees, a cold storage building and a garage serving a new ambulance and truck. The hospital grounds included terraced lawns and gardens separated by stone walls and connected by stone stairways and paths.
Heat initially provided by coal-burning fireplaces and lighting delivered by a system that piped a carbide and water solution to lamps throughout the building was upgraded as 1920 drew near.
When the 1920s arrived, new road building in the region, the increased popularity of cars and the construction of several new private hospitals in cities near the Gorge provided those seeking medical care more convenient options.
McKendree Hospital, which continued to rely mainly on rail service to transport patients and supplies, changed procedures and protocols by the 1930s to allow for the treatment of epidemic victims to augment a dwindling supply of coal mining patients as New River Gorge mines began to play out.
Despite the beginning of a decline in coal production, the hospital remained busy.
“The hospital was almost always full of patients,” said former nurse trainee Thelma Louise Cashion in a reflection included in a National Park Service history of the site.
After patients were greeted by nurses at the C&O siding at McKendree, they were accompanied to the hospital where they were assigned wards.
“There were large White and Black male wards and smaller White and Black female wards,” Cashion recalled. “There were integrated private rooms available for the women and their babies who were delivered there. Most of the patients by far were men with very serious and traumatic injuries including cuts and burns and crushed limbs requiring amputations. In 1933, the hospital was inundated with patients during a typhoid fever epidemic.”
By 1941, coal mining within the Gorge had dwindled to the point that the state closed McKendree Hospital. However, the building and its grounds remained open in a new role as the West Virginia Home for Aged and Infirm Colored Men and Women. With a staff of 16, it provided the basic needs for a population of about 100 for the next 15 years.
In 1956, the geriatric facility was moved to Huntington and relocated in the building that was formerly the West Virginia Colored Children’s Home.
In the years following the abandonment of the McKendree site, bricks and other construction materials from the hospital building and other nearby structures were removed and re-used or kept as souvenirs.
According to the National Park Service, the site was in ruins by 1969 and much of what remained was later bulldozed by the estate of Joseph Beury. The McKendree site was later bought by the National Park Service and is now a part of the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve.
Today, portions of the hospital’s basement substructure still stand but are open to the elements and tagged with graffiti. Segments of mossy stone walls that once retained terraces and enclosed gardens also can be found along with foundation stones for outbuildings and exterior stairsteps connecting terraces.
Trees, vines and underbrush have reclaimed most of the site, but from the remains of a retaining wall at the edge of what was once a driveway that looped its way to the hospital’s entrance, a long stretch of mild New River whitewater can be seen and heard about 100 feet below.
Today, it is possible, but difficult, to reach the site. A high-clearance all-wheel or four-wheel-drive vehicle is recommended, especially during or following rain.
Site access is gained by traveling Secondary Route 25, a narrow, sometimes extremely rough dirt road also known as McKendree-Thurmond Road, to an unmarked dirt turnoff road that descends from Route 25 toward the New River and the former hospital. It is recommended to park a short distance down the turnoff and walk the remaining one-third mile or so, bearing left at each of several possible intersections until that road ends, then continue left through a brief section of forest until remnants of the hospital come into view, provided visitors are looking carefully.
The south end of Route 25 is closest to the hospital site from a paved road, in this case, W.Va. 41. The intersection is to the left, just east of where the W.Va. 41 bridge crosses the New River. But the south end of the road is also by far its roughest, narrowest and worst-maintained section. A better option is to follow Route 25 south from the Thurmond end, where the road is wider, graveled and relatively well maintained, and follow it across the New River on the Stone Cliff Bridge and continue on to the tiny community of Thayer.
From Thayer, it’s about a three-mile drive to the unmarked downhill turnoff road to the right. It’s the only turnoff road that looks remotely passable by a full-size vehicle and appears to continue far down the slope.
"gorged" - Google News
March 13, 2022 at 02:30AM
https://ift.tt/26R9aUA
Few traces left of Gorge hospital that once treated miners, trained nurses - Charleston Gazette-Mail
"gorged" - Google News
https://ift.tt/BAObDFs
https://ift.tt/gp9LMft
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Few traces left of Gorge hospital that once treated miners, trained nurses - Charleston Gazette-Mail"
Post a Comment