Wichita General Hospital

The flu of 1918 arrived with the Burkburnett oil boom, just north of Wichita Falls. The camps held thousands of families short of food, clothing and shelter, and many caught the influenza. Red Cross field director Walter Cline called it the worst flu epidemic the country had ever had, and he remembered finding dead families, among them an infant lying near its dead mother. Wichita Falls residents sent lumber, bedding, food and clothing, which the railroad and local haulers carried free. The government sent doctors and nurses, and Red Cross workers sheltered and fed people through a hard winter.

What the plaque says

Wichita General Hospital WICHITA GENERAL HOSPITAL Wichita Falls was a growing town in 1882 as professionals started to arrive looking for opportunities. Dr. Perrigo arrived in 1881 and is believed to be the first doctor to practice in Wichita Falls. In 1909, Dr. Samuel Burnside opened the first modern hospital. As early as 1884, the citizens and physicians of Wichita Falls expressed the need for a county hospital. In 1915, construction finally started on a 40-bed hospital. Local architects Field & Clarkson designed a three-story red brick building. It was named Wichita General Hospital. Wichita General Hospital's school of nursing opened in December of 1915. By 1918, the new hospital was at its breaking point as the flu epidemic and population growth from the oil boom created a need for a bigger hospital. Construction of a fourth story created 55 more beds. Classroom expansion and office space were the only additions to the hospital until 1940 when buildings surrounding the hospital were purchased to house student nurses, classrooms and supplies. The next major addition to the hospital was in 1956 when expansion of the fourth and fifth floors was completed. In the 1960s, a new front entrance, the Frank Wood Chapel, the Gaines Educational Pavilion, Bridwell Surgical Pavilion and Streich's Intensive Care Center were constructed. An additional project in 1983 added an infant intensive care unit. By the mid-1980s, community leaders began to consider how to more effectively and efficiently provide health care services and, in 1997, Wichita General merged with Bethania Regional Medical Center to form United Regional Health Care System. By 2011, all services had been consolidated to an expanded campus on 11th street; the Wichita General Facility was razed in 2013. (2014)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Kell House Museum — 0.4 mi
  The 1909 Classic Revival house of Frank Kell, the miller and railroad builder who helped make Wichita Falls a city, shown by guided tour with its family furniture still in place.
• World's Littlest Skyscraper — 1.0 mi
  A four-story brick tower in downtown Wichita Falls, 40 feet tall and 10 feet wide, the leftover of a 1919 oil-boom office deal in which, the story goes, investors misread inches as feet.
• Lake Arrowhead State Park — 12 mi
  A prairie park on the north shore of the Wichita Falls water-supply lake, which drowned the town of Halsell in 1965-66, with mesquite campsites, a lighted pier and more than 200 bird species.
• Clay County 1890 Jail Museum — 19 mi
  Henrietta's 1890 stone jail a block from the domed courthouse, now the county museum, with its original cells, a gallows that was never used and the sheriff's family quarters.

More markers nearby

• Bethania Hospital — 0.2 mi
• Lloyd Ruby — 0.3 mi
• St. Paul Lutheran Church — 0.3 mi
• Wichita Falls Junior College — 0.4 mi