DUANE
Duane's take
Here's the story as the official marker tells it — and it's a good one. In March of 1868, a man named Captain William Alonzo Wainwright rode into Brownsville with a job that would have made a lesser man turn right back around. Fort Brown had taken a beating — first from the Civil War, and then, as if the war weren't enough, from a hurricane that came through in 1867.
The place needed rebuilding, and Wainwright was the man they sent to do it. Under his direction, one of the first structures to rise from all that wreckage was the Post Hospital. Completed in 1869, it wasn't just a place to patch up the wounded and the sick — it was something to look at.
Classical design. Palladian influences. Out here on the edge of Texas, somebody cared enough to build a thing with a little beauty in it.
Now, fast forward to 1883. A First Lieutenant by the name of William C. Gorgas was based right here at that very hospital.
And while he was here, he began the studies — the careful, patient, groundbreaking work — that would eventually lead to the discovery of the source of yellow fever. Yellow fever. The disease that had been cutting through armies and cities and whole populations for generations.
The trail to that discovery started right here, at a Post Hospital that a hurricane and a war had done their best to prevent from ever existing at all.
What the marker says
In March 1868, Captain William Alonzo Wainwright arrived in Brownsville to supervise the rebuilding of Fort Brown following the Civil War and an 1867 hurricane. One of the first structures built under his direction was the Post Hospital, completed in 1869 and noted for its classical design and Palladian influences. First Lt. William C. Gorgas began studies that led to the discovery of the source of yellow fever while he was based here in 1883.