Site of Railway Hospital
Columbus, Colorado County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Dr. Robert Henry Harrison (1826-1905), graduate of the Botanico Medical College, Cincinnati, and Alabama Medical College, moved to Columbus in the 1870s, while the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio (later Southern Pacific) railway was building Columbus- San Antonio line. Physician to G.H. & S.A. president T. W. Peirce, he was 1880-87 medical and surgical director, Atlantic Division of the Southern Pacific. In 1880 he built a hospital for railway employees at this site. Staff included Drs. J. H. Bowers, A. S. McDaniel, and R. H. Harrison, Jr. About 1886, hospital burned, and was not rebuilt.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
As railroads spread across Texas in the 1870s and 1880s, the companies took on the medical care of their far-flung crews. Dr. Robert Henry Harrison, trained in Cincinnati and Alabama, settled in Columbus as the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio line was building west, and served as medical director for the Southern Pacific's Atlantic Division. In 1880 he built a hospital for railway employees on this site, staffed by several physicians, until fire destroyed it around 1886 and it was never rebuilt.
Why it matters
The vanished railway hospital marks an early chapter in American industrial medicine, when the railroads that opened the West also pioneered organized health care for the workers who built them.
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Related people
- · Robert Henry Harrison
- · T. W. Peirce
Themes & tags
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