Dr. H.H. Milling

The Millings were a family trade. Clay Coppedge's Texas Escapes column says H. H. Milling's father Roscoe and uncle George billed themselves rubbing doctors and mixed massage, magnetic healing and hypnosis, with local mineral water where it flowed. Both admired Sidney Weltmer's Magnetic Institution in Missouri. Roscoe opened a sanitarium at Stephenville in 1890. Because they could not call their places hospitals without licenses, they argued in court that guests paid only for room and board. George was murdered at Glen Rose, and Roscoe stood trial in Abilene.

What the plaque says

Dr. H.H. Milling Georgia native Hugh Hartwell Milliing (1894-1984) was the son of Roscoe G. Milling, who practiced several areas of experimental medicine. He trained his son in these methods, which included magnetic treatment and the "Milling method of masseuring." The younger Milling married Lillian Abell in 1916 and the couple moved to Mineral Wells the following year, where he purchased an existing sanitarium and began a thriving practice. He soon built a larger facility, and in 1929 constructed a final one at what is now the intersection of S.E. 23rd St. and Millsap Rd. In 1933 Milling donated property for a park named in his honor (later Pollard Park). In 1948 he sold his sanitarium to Dr. C.W. Irvine and moved his practice to Grand Prairie. (2011)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Mineral Wells State Park and Trailway — 4.2 mi
  A Cross Timbers park on the old Camp Wolters grounds, built around a 1922 water-supply lake for a spa town, with Penitentiary Hollow's rock climbing and a 20-mile trailway.
• Chandor Gardens — 18 mi
  A portrait painter's English-and-Chinese garden rooms, blasted and planted from a bare 3.5-acre hillside in Weatherford beginning in 1936, abandoned after 1978 and reopened by the city in 2002.

More markers nearby

• Famous Mineral Water Company — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Mineral Wells — 0.4 mi
• Mineral Wells — 0.5 mi
• Old Camp Wolters — 2.3 mi