The New Deal, World War II, and Curing Tuberculosis, 1930-1952

The onset of the Great Depression in 1929 led to the decline of the sanitorium industry in New Mexico. The economic turmoil made journeying to New Mexico prohibitively expensive to many health seekers. But by this point medical experts no longer deemed climate essential for treating tuberculosis. Improved diagnostic tools enabled physicians to identify the disease earlier, which led to more effective local treatment and diminished the need for long-term care. Combined, these factors caused the number of ailing travelers to New Mexico to dwindle. During the 1930s, the majority of the smaller, private sanitoriums shut down. Larger ones—such as St. Joseph Sanatorium and Southwestern Presbyterian Sanitorium in Albuquerque, St. Mary's Hospital in Roswell, and St. Vincent Sanitorium in Santa Fe—became community hospitals.

As a federal institution with a national mission, Fort Stanton Hospital defied the trends in the rest of the sanitorium industry and expanded during the 1930s and 1940s. It received an influx of New Deal funding that increased in the size of its staff, which reached 325 employees, and led to the modernization and expansion the facility. Between 1933 and 1935, a new power plant and laundry, gift shop, three school buildings, a house, and a bus and ambulance garage were built beyond the parade ground core. The chapel was also originally built during the first half of the 1930s near the old hospital but later moved in 1943 to its current location. In 1936, the old commissary was knocked down and replaced with a new hospital that included the first electric elevator in the state. Whereas the site's nineteenth century structures were predominately built out of stone and wood from the surrounding landscape, these new buildings—along with subsequent ones—were constructed out of material brought from outside the site.

Between 1938 and 1940, new wooden cottages replaced Carrington's canvas tents and a host of new structures and features were added, including warehouse facilities, silos, a concrete bridge over the Rio Bonito, and a new road linking Fort Stanton with the north side of the river. Between 1940 and 1941, a nurses' residence, built in the Spanish Pueblo Revival style, replaced the old hospital on the southwest corner of the parade ground. Further southwest, seven Spanish Pueblo Revival bungalows were built to house additional staff. Around the same time, a museum and canteen were constructed near the old laundress quarters. These updates ensured that Fort Stanton Hospital remained one of the most modern medical facilities in the country.

Fort Stanton Hospital's renovated facilities led the establishment of a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp on the north side of the Rio Bonito in 1935. One of forty-four CCC camps in New Mexico, camp SCS-6-N was established at this particular location in large part due to the ready access of electricity from the new power plant. Between 1935 and 1940, CCC workers conducted reforestation and soil conservation projects at nearby Lincoln National Forest. They also constructed a significant number of buildings at camp SCS-6-N, including six barracks, a mess hall, a laundry, lavatory and shower rooms, a small infirmary, and an officer's quarters. SCS-6-N, as a result, was likely one of the largest CCC camps in New Mexico.

The outbreak of World War II led to the repurposing of camp SCS-6-N. In September 1939, the U.S. Navy rescued the German crew of the SS Columbus after they scuttled their ship in the Atlantic to avoid capture by the British Navy. Technically neutral in the growing conflict, the U.S. government treated the sailors as distressed seamen, holding them first at Ellis Island and then moving them to Angel Island in San Francisco Bay. As conditions made it increasingly difficult to repatriate the sailors to Germany, the U.S. government decided to place the Germans in a long-term settlement. At the end of 1940, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) dispatched Wilhelm Daehne, the captain of the SS Columbus, to visit potential sites to relocate his crew. He ultimately chose the area around Fort Stanton Hospital as a result of the facilities available at the CCC camp, the adjacent medical facilities, and the areas isolation from an increasingly hostile American public. The CCC turned over camp SCS-6-N to INS and relocated the CCC workers to the Girls' Baca Camp a few miles to the east. Fort Stanton Hospital thus became the first U.S. internment camp during World War II.

In January 1941, Captain Daehne and 39 German sailors traveled to Fort Stanton Hospital under the watchful eyes of the Border Patrol. They began to renovate camp SCS-6-N and prepare it for the rest of the crew. They built four new barracks, a kitchen, laundry, mess hall, lavatories, washrooms, shops, officers' quarters, and a medical dispensary. Forty more sailors arrived the following month and helped construct workspaces for barbers, tailors, and other specialized crewmen who staffed the SS Columbus. In March, the remaining 331 sailors arrived. Camp SCS-6-N, now home to 410 German sailors, became known as "Columbus Hill."

One German sailor later recalled that "we were in a way disappointed" by what they perceived as the desolate environment around Fort Stanton Hospital. Nevertheless, Daehne tried to keep his men occupied and encouraged them to make the camp as homey as possible. They painted buildings, planted trees, grew gardens, and landscaped the entire camp. They also built one-room cabins—perhaps modeled after Fort Stanton Hospital's wooden cottages— along the Rio Bonito. They sold surplus vegetables to the surrounding community and used the proceeds to buy books for their own library. By the end of 1941, they added a number of sports facilities, including a pool, tennis courts, a soccer field, and a track.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the resulting U.S. entry into World War II in December 1941 altered the treatment of the German sailors. They went from distressed seamen to alien enemies. Border Patrol enclosed the camp with wire fencing, erected guard towers and flood lights, and deployed armed guards. The U.S. government also brought more internees to the site. In 1942, the United States transferred a group of around fifty Japanese-American farmers from California and established a second internment camp at Fort Stanton. The U.S. government deported these internees the following year. In the meantime, more sailors from other German camps were detained at Fort Stanton. By 1943, there were 652 German internees at the camp. Eventually, the site held a total of 778 detainees, including 695 Germans, 21 Italians, and 62 Japanese.

This second phase of the German camp resulted in the construction of a number of structures. On the southside of the Rio Bonito opposite Columbus Hill, seven wooden bungalow cottages were built, perhaps to house Border Patrol guards. Within the German camp, the internees built a large recreation hall in 1944, for which they manufactured 13,200 adobe bricks for its construction. They engraved "Erbaut 1944," meaning "Built in 1944," above the main entrance, which is still legible today.

Following Germany’s surrender in May 1945, the U.S. government repatriated the internees and closed the camp. Four Germans, however, never made it home. Two died from trichinosis, one died by suicide, and another was killed in a drunken brawl. They are buried in the Merchant Marine Cemetery alongside the patients who succumbed to tuberculosis. In the following months, internees from the Japanese internment camp in Santa Fe were brought in to dismantle the camp at Fort Stanton. They removed the CCC’s portable barracks and destroyed roughly 150 small internee houses. The INS returned ownership of the area back to Fort Stanton Hospital in October 1945.

Fort Stanton Hospital's role as a federal sanitorium fell into decline in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In 1949, medical researchers developed a new antibiotic called isoniazid to treat tuberculosis. By 1952, pharmaceutical companies began to mass produce the drug. Isoniazid and other antibiotics, such as streptomycin, provided an effective cure for tuberculosis in most patients. The country's mortality rate from tuberculosis plummeted rapidly from 71.5 deaths per 100,000 in 1930 to 10.2 deaths per 100,000 in 1954. With tuberculosis effectively cured, the federal government transferred Fort Stanton Hospital to the State of New Mexico in 1953.

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