Site of Harmon General Hospital

KLTV's history of the hospital says construction began in May 1942 and the hospital opened that November with more than 1,500 beds. It grew to nearly 3,000 beds in 157 buildings and housed 270 members of the Women's Army Corps. It had a malaria section, X-ray and laboratory services and a dental program that could treat up to 4,000 patients at a time. Helen Keller visited in 1944. More than 23,000 military patients were treated, and in 1946 R. G. LeTourneau acquired the 156-acre site. The original chapel still stands.

What the plaque says

Site of Harmon General Hospital Established here by the United States Army in 1942, Harmon General Hospital was named for Colonel Daniel W. Harmon (1880-1940), a medical officer in the regular Army. 220 buildings were rapidly constructed on the 156-acre site, and the hospital was activated on Nov. 24, 1942, with Colonel G. V. Emerson as the first commanding officer. Harmon General had facilities for surgery, physical therapy, laboratory analysis, dental care, and medical treatment. Associated with the hospital were a post exchange, chapel, library, post office, bank, theater, gymnasium, laundry, mess halls, barracks, and living quarters for the nurses and physicians -- all combined to make the facility a self-reliant community. Major M. K. Moulding succeeded Colonel Emerson as commanding officer. 200 inmates of the prisoner of war camp at Fannin were assigned in May 1945 to work at the hospital. The facility closed when the last of the 25,000 wartime patients left in Dec. 1945. The hospital attracted wide community support. The Garden Study Club of Longview landscaped much of the grounds. Their projects included an "allee or crepe myrtle" planted along the original main entrance. LeTourneau College now (1976) occupies the site. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• East Texas Oil Museum — 10 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
• New London Museum and Cenotaph — 20 mi
  A volunteer-run museum beside the pink granite cenotaph for the March 1937 school gas explosion, holding a model of the school, a blackboard from that day and an odorizer device.
• Starr Family Home State Historic Site — 22 mi
  Maplecroft, the 1871 Greek Revival house Frank Starr built in Marshall, with Ruth Starr Blake's glass and china, an 1880s kitchen restored in 2019 and a retirement home built for a formerly enslaved person.
• Harrison County Historical Museum — 22 mi
  Galleries in Marshall's 1901 courthouse that run from the Caddo to the present, with Wiley College, Lady Bird Johnson's inaugural gown and a military gallery across the square in Memorial City Hall.

More markers nearby

• Robert Gilmour LeTourneau — steps away
• Red Oak Missionary Baptist Church — 0.9 mi
• Big Inch Pipeline — 1.1 mi
• Longview Junction — 1.9 mi