History

Since 1947, Mountains Community Hospital has been at the heart of mountain healthcare for locals and visitors alike.

In 1947, most of the area that is now known as Arrowhead
Woods was owned by the Los Angeles Turf Club, owners of the
Santa Anita Race Track.

To foster a feeling of community on the mountain, the Turf Club donated large tracts of land around Lake Arrowhead to the Boy Scouts, churches, and to the County of San Bernardino. Perhaps their most significant donation, however, was to the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange, an order of Catholic nuns dedicated to caring
for the sick, orphans, and women and children in need.

The Sisters of St. Joseph used the Turf Club’s donation of four and a half acres of land—as well as $50,000 in cash—to build themountain’s first hospital. The Turf Club also donated a Cadillac ambulance.

On June 10, 1951 Santa Anita Hospital opened its doors, staffed by six Sisters of St. Joseph and fifteen doctors, nurses and technicians, and administered by the order’s Sister MaryAlma.

The hospital’s first patient was an expectant mother who arrived to find workmen clearing nails and sawdust from the floor of the delivery room. By the end of that year, six more babies had been born at Santa Anita Hospital.

When it opened its doors, the 30-bed community hospital was heralded as one of the most modern medical facilities in the United States, with two operating rooms, an emergency clinic, a delivery
suite and 8-bed nursery, on-site laboratory, x-ray equipment and ambulance service. The presence of a state-of-the-art hospital was touted to mountain visitors as a convenience no less valuable than the mountain shops and restaurants or the Village barber.

Click Here for our 12 page, in-depth look at MCH's
65 year history!