Site of Blackwell Hospital

Gorman, home of the Blackwell clinic and hospital, became a supply center during the county's oil boom of 1917-22, with the Kirk oilfield nearby. Later the town turned to peanuts. The Handbook of Texas says the first peanut-shelling machine in Texas was used in Gorman in 1940, and by 1986 the town had one of the most efficient shelling plants in the United States. Both the Texas Peanut Producers Board and the Southwest Peanut Growers' Association made their headquarters here; the association ran the western peanut price support program for the Department of Agriculture.

What the plaque says

Much of Eastland County's medical history can be traced to the work of two brothers, George and Edward Blackwell. George (1882-1955) attended Baylor Medical College and Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, where Edward (1890-1956) also attended. Both men returned to Eastland County after receiving their degrees. In 1907, George wed Frankie Brogdon, and in 1913, Edward wed her sister, Bessie. The two young physicians served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during World War I. Following the war, the brothers opened the Blackwell Clinic in downtown Gorman. They soon realized the need for patient care facilities, and in 1919 they built Blackwell Sanitarium, later known as Blackwell Hospital, at this site. Frankie and Bessie prepared meals at the new facility, which utilized its own livestock as a source of meat, eggs, milk and butter. Nurses performed medical service, as well as housekeeping tasks, and the brothers treated patients at both the clinic and the hospital. Contemporary to the hospital's opening, two large oilfields began drawing scores of new residents to the area, and the hospital continued to grow to meet demand. The brothers, who eventually moved their clinic to the hospital facilities, began to specialize and add new physicians to the staff. These included Dr. David V. Rodgers (1910-1971), George Blackwell's son-in-law who joined the staff in 1938 and assumed hospital leadership in the late 1950s. In 1971, hospital administrators completed a larger building elsewhere. Having grown to become a four-story brick edifice, with doctor and dental offices, clinic and laboratory, the old Blackwell Hospital building remained vacant until its demolition in 1989. (2005)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Rip at the Eastland County Courthouse — 15 mi
  A horned lizard in a glass-topped casket in the 1928 Eastland courthouse, the creature said to have come out alive from the old building's cornerstone after thirty-one years.
• Conrad Hilton Center and Mobley Hotel — 22 mi
  The 40-room oil-boom hotel in Cisco that Conrad Hilton bought in 1919 when a bank deal fell through, now a museum of the Hilton start and of Cisco's 1927 Santa Claus bank robbery.
• Lake Brownwood State Park — 32 mi
  A CCC park on a reservoir that filled in a single flood before its dam was done, with stone cabins, a hilltop dance pavilion and a grand staircase climbed by dancers arriving by boat.

More markers nearby

• Old Shinoak Springs — 1.4 mi
• Desdemona Cemetery — 7.8 mi
• Fort Blair, C.S.A. — 8.2 mi
• Desdemona First Baptist Church — 8.5 mi