Ellen White: Woman of Vision

The Paradise Valley Property

After the camp meeting in September 1902, Ellen White went down to San Diego and twice visited the Potts Sanitarium property, about six miles (10 kilometers) south of the city. The buildings had stood idle for years, and the property was available for only a fraction of the original cost. WV 459.1

Here was a well-constructed, three-story building of about fifty rooms, with broad verandas, standing upon a pleasant rise of ground, and overlooking a beautiful valley. Many of the rooms are large and airy....Besides the main building, there is a good stable, and also a six-room cottage, which can be fitted up for helpers. WV 459.2

The property is conveniently located, being less than seven miles [12 kilometers] from San Diego, and about a mile [two kilometers] from the National City post office. There are twenty-two acres [nine hectares] of land. About one half of this had once been planted to fruit trees, but during the long drought that this country has suffered, all the trees died except the ornamental trees and shrubbery around the buildings, and about seventy olive trees on the terraces.... I never saw a building offered for sale that was better adapted for sanitarium work. If this place were fixed up, it would look just like places that have been shown me by the Lord (Special Testimonies, Series B 14:8, 9). WV 459.3

The Southern California Conference felt unable to invest in the enterprise, so Ellen White borrowed $2,000 from the St. Helena Bank at 8 percent interest, and Josephine Gotzian, a close friend, provided the other $2,000 toward the total price of $4,000. The two women “clasped hands in an agreement to unite in helping to purchase the Potts Sanitarium” (Letter 97, 1904). With funds that were put into the enterprise by Prof. E. S. Ballenger and his parents, they paid $300 in back taxes and used $800 to buy eight acres (four hectares) of needed land adjoining the property. There were other expenses that brought the total cost of the property to $5,300. Of course, the two women and the Ballenger family had no intention of keeping the property as theirs. Nor did they have any intention of making it a matter of financial speculation. They purchased it to hold it until the business could be organized and the conference could take control. WV 459.4

But with the property in their hands, the next step was to find someone to manage and develop it. For 15 years it had been unoccupied, and there was much to be done. Ellen White speaks of the next step: WV 459.5

Having secured the place, we needed a manager, and we found one ready for the work. Brother E. R. Palmer and his wife, who had spent the winter in Arizona, were in San Diego.... They were willing to take charge of the work of fitting up the sanitarium building for use (The Review and Herald, March 16, 1905 [Special Testimonies, Series B 10:10, 11]). WV 460.1

Elder Palmer arranged to have the building wired for electricity and had it cleaned up and painted outside. Then he began to assemble furniture for the new sanitarium. WV 460.2

He discovered that wealthy businessmen who went to California for the winter would rent a place and buy good-quality furniture for their use. When they wished to return to their homes in the East, they would make the furniture available at very reasonable prices. Thus Palmer was able to secure furniture, some of it bird's-eye maple, for furnishing at least a portion of the new institution. WV 460.3

A well and windmill furnished a limited supply of water, but it was known from the outset that the system could never supply the needs of a sanitarium. Palmer described the water situation: “The twenty-acre [eight-hectare] tract of land on which the building stands was as dry as the hills of Gilboa, with only a remote prospect for water underground” (DF 2a, E. R. Palmer, “The Paradise Valley Sanitarium”). WV 460.4

Palmer and his fellow workers knew from their contacts with Ellen White that it was in the providence of God that the institution had been bought. They were confident that God would find a way to meet their needs. Still, through the summer of 1904 they suffered severely from the drought—a drought that had lasted eight or nine years (W. L. Johns and R. H. Utt, eds., The Vision Bold, WV 460.5

p. 147). They watched the trees wither and die, and Mrs. White wrote: “The poor, drying up, dying trees are beseeching us by their appearance for refreshing streams of water” (Manuscript 147, 1904). Palmer referred to their source of confidence in these words: “The Lord had spoken concerning these points, and His servants responded by purchasing the estate” (DF 2a, E. R. Palmer, “The Paradise Valley Sanitarium”). WV 460.6