St. Helena Hospital Celebrates 130 Years of Remarkable Medicine

The hillside campus that is now home to an acute care hospital complete with 24-hour emergency room, heliport, state-of-the-art surgical suites and imaging technology has humble but inspired beginnings.

The 181-bed modern medical center that is St. Helena Hospital began as a simple two-story, wood frame structure and a collection of tents pitched near a fresh-water spring.

According to one account, there were 14 guests waiting at the St. Helena train station when the Rural Health Retreat, as it was first named, opened on June 7, 1878. A team of horses in a three-seated, spring wagon conveyed them up the hill to the Retreat, which consisted of 13 bedrooms, a dining room, kitchen, parlor, doctors office and treatment rooms downstairs.

Explore Our History

As we celebrate our anniversary, we will share the chapters in our history with you. Please explore these chapters below:

Healthy Inspiration

In an era when medicine of the day included blood letting with leeches, arsenic drugging and inhaling of resin fumes, the Rural Health Retreat promised, All the various forms of water vapors, hot air, medicated and electric baths, Swedish movements, proper exercise and rest. Pure soft water and wholesome diet. Agreeable mental influences, delightful climate, beautiful scenery and pleasant surroundings. Medications such as each individual case may demand

The inspiration for the Retreat came from a group of Seventh-day Adventists who wanted to found a health institute in the West similar to the church's first health care sanitarium, which had opened in Battle Creek, Mich., a decade or so earlier.

Dr. Merritt G. Kellogg, an Adventist physician who returned to California after receiving six months of medical training in the East, had earned respect in Santa Rosa during a smallpox outbreak. His approach of treating patients with water treatments and healthful diet saved 10 out of 11 patients, while a local physician using drugs lost four out of five.

Kellogg's brother John Harvey Kellogg was well known for operating the Battle Creek sanitarium, while another brother William Keith Kellogg, was the breakfast food magnate of Corn Flakes fame.

In the summer of 1877, A.B. Atwood brought his sick wife to Dr. Merritt Kellogg for treatment at Rutherford Station. Grateful for the care of his wife, Atwood discussed with Dr. Kellogg his need for larger quarters and suggested an ideal location with a large spring of soft water on it. The land was owned by Atwood's friend, church member William Pratt, a Gold Rush miner who had settled in the area. Pratt had already been approached by church elders with the idea of a Retreat, as the concept was first endorsed at a Camp Meeting in 1874.

The result was a partnership by the three men to create the Rural Health Retreat.

Pratt donated 10 acres of his property, an interest in the mountain spring and $3,000; Atwood donated $1,000 and Kellogg promised $1,000 in labor as physician. Work began to build a road up the mountain, and in January 1878, the building rose.

Ellen White, a co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, remarked on a visit that this shelf of land halfway up Howell Mountain was the site she had seen in a vision of how the churchs ministry of healing would come to the West.

Soon after its opening, the Retreat proved so popular that employees had to move into tents on the hillside. Some patients also opted to sleep in tents, even when rooms were available, to partake of the fresh air.

Life at The San

An addition was built in 1879 and the first recorded baby born at the Retreat was Artemus Atwood on April 29, 1880. In 1891, a nursing school opened, the second on the West Coast and the first to graduate a male nurse.

During the 1890s, the Retreat was renamed St. Helena Sanitarium, and kept growing. A tennis court, natatorium (swimming pool), telephonic communication, and more wells were added, and three more floors were built into the hillside. A post office opened in 1901, the same year that a four-story health food factory with two large reel ovens, five granose flake machines and equipment for making unfermented grape juice was built.

After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, tents were once again pitched on the hillside to provide temporary housing for those who fled the city.

The Sanitarium grew to a five-story building with open porches and the ambiance of a grand hotel. Guests were met by pages who escorted them across the veranda, inside to the registration desk and the hand-operated elevator. While providing acute medical-surgical and maternity services, the Sanitarium also offered hydrotherapy, massage, physical and occupational therapy and other preventive medicine programs.

A typical day at the Sanitarium in the 1930s began with the playing of reveille and the raising of the flag at sunrise. Guests were expected to be on the roof at 7 a.m. where a physical therapist led them in morning exercises complete with live piano accompaniment. Other activities included croquet, tennis, archery and darts. [i] A hostess seated guests and their visitors in the dining room, which served vegetarian food.

The Era of Modern Medicine

Over the decades, there have been many changes to the campus. The original hospital building was replaced in 1968 and a year later the Sanitarium became St. Helena Hospital and Health Center. In the 1970s, St. Helena Hospital offered numerous new programs to keep up with changing healthcare needs, including a mental health unit and alcohol and chemical recovery program.

In 1974, a team of surgeons performed the first open-heart surgery in the North Bay, paving the way for St. Helena Hospital to become a leader in cardiac care. History continues to be written, as just last year, St. Helena was named among the Top 100 Cardiovascular Hospitals in the country.

Today, the Center for Health continues to embody the ideals of the early Retreat by providing three comprehensive lifestyle-change and wellness programs to help people achieve optimal health: the Center for Smoke-Free Life, Transformations Wellness & Weight Management Program, and ONE: The Napa Valley Personal Health Experience.

The passage of time has changed much over 130 years. But whether patients arrived by horse-drawn carriage or life-flight helicopter, whether they were treated under tents or in sterile operating rooms, the mission of St. Helena Hospital and its caregivers remains the same: to treat not just disease, but the whole person - body, mind and spirit.

[1] Quevedo, Jane Allen. A Thousand Miracles Every Day. "Where Adventist Healthcare Began in the West," page 9, TEACH Services, Inc., 2003.