Dallas Baby Camp
Dallas, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
By the middle of the 19th century, medicine in the United States was developing; however, the field of pediatrics lagged behind. In 1872, Texas passed a State Medical Practice Act but failed to mention the pediatric specialty. As late as 1885, Dallas’ only public hospital facility was a small frame building on Lamar Street, known as City Hospital. By 1897, Reverend R.C. Buckner established a private children’s hospital dedicated solely to the care of children in association with Buckner’s Orphan Home in Dallas but had to close soon after for financial reasons. From 1904 to 1913, May Forster Smith, a private-duty nurse, worked at area hospitals. Seeing the plight of poor infants suffering from dehydration and other maladies, May invited her fellow nurses to a meeting to identify a solution. Smith and her colleagues convinced the Dallas Graduate Nurses Association in 1913 to endorse and form a baby camp to treat small infants. The first baby camp in the Southwest and third in the country opened on April 6, 1913 on the campus of the Parkland Hospital and was originally housed in four tents supplied by the American Red Cross. The city’s leadership quickly realized the continued need for the camp and relocated the facilities in 1914 to a small cottage on the hospital grounds. Due to the generosity of charitable organizations, the camp continued to provide care to infants and educate new mothers in infant care. In 1929, T.L. Bradford donated the funds to build a larger facility on Maple Avenue. In 1947, the Baby Camp, Bradford Hospital, Children’s Hospital, and Freeman Clinic came together as Children’s Medical Center of Dallas, one of the largest pediatric providers in the nation. (2012)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In an era when American pediatrics lagged far behind other medicine, Dallas nurse May Forster Smith saw poor infants dying of dehydration and rallied her colleagues to act. In 1913 the Dallas Graduate Nurses Association opened the first baby camp in the Southwest—four Red Cross tents on the Parkland Hospital grounds—to treat sick babies and teach new mothers infant care. The camp grew into a cottage, then a Maple Avenue hospital, and in 1947 merged into what became Children's Medical Center of Dallas, one of the nation's largest pediatric providers.
Why it matters
The Dallas Baby Camp shows how women in the nursing profession pioneered modern child health care, turning a few charity tents into a major institution during the Progressive Era's public-health awakening.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
At the turn of the twentieth century, American medicine was advancing quickly — but its care for the very youngest lagged badly behind. Pediatrics was barely recognized as its own field. When Texas passed a State Medical Practice Act in 1872, it did not even mention the specialty, and decades later the gap was still measured in children's lives.
Dallas felt that gap sharply. As late as 1885 the city's only public hospital facility was a small frame building on Lamar Street, and an early attempt at a dedicated children's hospital, established in 1897 alongside Buckner's Orphan Home, had to close soon after for lack of money. The need was obvious; the institutions to meet it simply did not yet exist.
This was the Progressive Era, though — a time when reformers, and very often women, looked hard at social problems and built practical answers. Public health was becoming a cause, and trained nurses were emerging as a professional force. Dallas was ready for someone to see the suffering plainly and refuse to accept it.
People & events
That someone was May Forster Smith. From 1904 to 1913 she worked as a private-duty nurse in Dallas-area hospitals, and in that work she saw what the statistics hid: poor infants dying of dehydration and other treatable maladies for want of care. She did not simply lament it. She called her fellow nurses together to find a solution.
Smith and her colleagues persuaded the Dallas Graduate Nurses Association in 1913 to endorse and form a "baby camp" to treat small infants. It opened on April 6, 1913, on the campus of Parkland Hospital — the first baby camp in the Southwest and the third in the entire country. Its first facilities were four tents supplied by the American Red Cross.
The idea worked, and the city's leadership quickly saw it. In 1914 the camp moved into a small cottage on the hospital grounds, sustained by the generosity of charitable organizations, treating sick babies and teaching new mothers how to care for their infants. In 1929 T. L. Bradford donated funds for a larger facility on Maple Avenue. Then, in 1947, the Baby Camp joined with Bradford Hospital, Children's Hospital, and the Freeman Clinic to become Children's Medical Center of Dallas — one of the largest pediatric providers in the nation.
Its place in the American story
The Dallas Baby Camp is a small, vivid example of a large national truth: much of America's early public-health and child-welfare infrastructure was built by women, and often by nurses, working through voluntary associations rather than government. Faced with a need that official medicine ignored, they organized and built the answer themselves.
Being the third such camp in the country places Dallas near the front of a national reform movement. In the Progressive Era, activists across the United States attacked infant mortality directly — through clinics, milk stations, and education for mothers — and dramatically drove down death rates that earlier generations had accepted as inevitable. The baby camp's double mission, treating sick infants and teaching new mothers, captures that movement's core insight: care and education together saved lives.
And the arc from four tents to a major medical center is the most American part of the story. A charitable improvisation grew, step by step, into a permanent institution serving generations. It is a reminder that some of the country's great hospitals began not with endowments but with a nurse who would not look away.
If you visit
The site sits within the world of Dallas's medical district, and the best way to visit is to carry the image of those first four tents with you. Stand where the story began and picture April 1913: canvas supplied by the Red Cross, pitched on hospital grounds, sheltering infants no one else would treat. It's a humble origin for something enormous.
Let the contrast do the work. The same effort that started under canvas became a cottage, then a Maple Avenue hospital, then in 1947 a founding piece of Children's Medical Center of Dallas. Reading the marker in the shadow of a modern medical complex, you can feel the whole distance traveled in a single lifetime of effort.
If you're exploring Dallas beyond its downtown landmarks, this is a stop that rewards the curious and especially resonates for families. It honors a woman whose name few travelers know and a profession — nursing — whose founders rarely got monuments. Take a moment here to give May Forster Smith her due.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
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Themes & tags
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