Scott & White Hospital
Temple, Bell County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railway established the town of Temple in 1881 and located the Santa Fe Railway Hospital at Temple in 1891. Dr. Arthur Carroll Scott, Sr. (1865-1940) became Chief Surgeon of the Railway in 1892. In 1895 he hired Dr. Raleigh R. White, Jr., (1871-1917) who was promoted to co-chief Surgeon by 1897. Doctors Scott and White formed a private practice partnership in 1897, and in 1904 they opened a hospital known as the Temple Sanitarium. Located in downtown Temple, it was renamed Scott & White Hospital in 1922 and expanded to six city blocks. The hospital became a training facility for nurses and doctors. Several new divisions of specialized medicine were added after World War II, and the hospital gained a national reputation for medical research. Following relocation to this site in 1963, the hospital expanded. By 1995 more than 6,000 people were employed here, and over one million patient visits were recorded. The largest group practice in Texas, Scott & White continues as a leader in the development of health care and has become a world-renowned medical facility. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Temple was born as a railroad town in 1881, and by 1891 the Santa Fe had planted a hospital there to care for its workers. Two surgeons, Arthur C. Scott and Raleigh R. White, joined forces in a private partnership in 1897 and in 1904 opened the Temple Sanitarium, later renamed Scott & White. From those railroad-medicine roots it grew into one of the nation's largest group practices and a hub of medical training and research.
Why it matters
Scott & White traces the American arc from frontier railroad infirmary to world-class medical center, showing how institutions built to serve a rail line could seed lasting centers of science and care.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Dr. Arthur Carroll Scott, Sr.
- · Dr. Raleigh R. White, Jr.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Ralph Wilson, Sr.
Temple, TX
With only a high-school education, Ralph Wilson moved from Indiana to California in 1920 and worked his way into the decorative plaster and molding trade, buying his employer's company in 1928 and surviving the Depression. During World War II his shop made molds for bullet-proof fuel tanks and began experimenting with plastics, leading him into high-pressure decorative laminate. In the mid-1950s he founded Ralph Wilson Plastics—now Wilsonart International—in Temple, growing it into the world's largest maker of the material and endowing a lasting charitable trust.
Site of 1920's Factory of the Temple Monoplane
Temple, TX
In 1927 engineer George W. Williams joined Roy Sanderford, George Carroll, and his brother E.K. Williams to form the Texas Aero Corporation, and in 1928 the firm won federal Approved Type Certificate No. 45 to build and sell the Temple Monoplane. Designed chiefly for airmail and equipped for night flight — a genuine innovation for its day — the aircraft showed real promise. But the 1929 stock market crash and Williams's death in a 1930 training accident closed the plant for good.
Blackland Experiment Station, Substation No. 5
Temple, TX
Authorized by the Texas Legislature in 1909 and opened in 1911, this experiment station near Temple was part of a national system of federally supported research farms created by the 1887 Hatch Act. Staffed by Texas A&M scientists, it tackled the region's soil and crop problems—especially the dreaded cotton root rot—from a site poised between the Grand Prairie's hills and the rich Blackland soils. As farming mechanized it expanded, drew in USDA scientists, and evolved into today's Blackland Research and Extension Center.
Major Archibald Johnson Rose
Salado, TX
Archibald Johnson Rose made a fortune in the 1849 California Gold Rush before bringing his family to Texas, serving as a Confederate major, and settling in Salado in 1870. A progressive farmer, he helped found the first Texas Grange in 1873 and then the statewide Grange, building cooperatives, textile mills, and an insurance company while lobbying for farmer protections and better schools. He served on school boards and the boards of Salado College, Mary Hardin-Baylor, and Texas A&M.