Site of Railway Hospital

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about this place. Now, Columbus, Texas has seen its share of characters come and go, but few arrived with quite the timing of Dr. Robert Henry Harrison.

The man was a graduate of not one but two institutions, the Botanico Medical College up in Cincinnati and the Alabama Medical College, and he moved to Columbus in the 1870s. And here's where the timing gets interesting. The Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway was right in the middle of building its Columbus to San Antonio line.

The railroad was coming through, and Dr. Harrison was coming with it. He served as physician to T.

W. Peirce, president of the G.H. and S.A., and by 1880 he had risen to medical and surgical director of the Atlantic Division of the Southern Pacific, a position he would hold through 1887. That same year, 1880, he built a hospital right here at this site, dedicated to the care of railway employees.

It had a proper staff. Drs. J.

H. Bowers, A. S.

McDaniel, and R. H. Harrison, Jr. all worked within its walls.

For a stretch, this was a real institution, a place where the men who built and ran those iron roads could get genuine medical attention. Then, about 1886, the hospital burned. And it was not rebuilt.

Dr. Harrison, born in 1826 and gone by 1905, had given this corner of Columbus something lasting, even if the building itself did not last. The marker stands where the hospital stood.

The railroad moved on. That's how it goes out here.

What the marker says

Dr. Robert Henry Harrison (1826-1905), graduate of the Botanico Medical College, Cincinnati, and Alabama Medical College, moved to Columbus in the 1870s, while the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio (later Southern Pacific) railway was building Columbus- San Antonio line. Physician to G.H. & S.A. president T. W. Peirce, he was 1880-87 medical and surgical director, Atlantic Division of the Southern Pacific. In 1880 he built a hospital for railway employees at this site. Staff included Drs. J. H. Bowers, A. S. McDaniel, and R. H. Harrison, Jr. About 1886, hospital burned, and was not rebuilt.