Ellen G. White: The Later Elmshaven Years: 1905-1915 (vol. 6)

Proposal of a Sanitarium at Canon City

Just then another factor was interjected—the proposition of establishing a new sanitarium in Colorado. This was to be in Canon City, 100 miles to the south of Boulder, in a rather sparsely settled area. The chief attraction was newly developed artesian wells with mineral water thought to be of curative value. 6BIO 37.2

The Denver papers of August 5 carried the story. A corporation was being formed to open a general tourist sanitarium. The incorporators were Pitt W. Wade, a young Seventh-day Adventist physician; A. G. Wade, his brother; and W. W. Hills, a physician who had labored for years as a minister in the Colorado Conference. 6BIO 37.3

The board of directors was announced as: Pitt W. Wade, W. W. Hills, C. J. Frederickson (the county treasurer), M. J. Evans (a banker), and the president of the Colorado Conference. Capital stock was set at $200,000, in shares of one dollar each. The objectives stated in the corporation charter were broad. First, on the list was “the founding of a general tourist sanitarium,” but the category of potential interests embraced almost every type of activity from owning, controlling, and leasing of manufacturing plants, to mercantile concerns, printing establishments, and cattle raising. The promoters hoped to raise some $40,000 from Seventh-day Adventists. 6BIO 37.4

The announcing of these plans did two things: it brought discouragement to those trying to make the Boulder Sanitarium a success, and it led the messenger of the Lord to enter the picture. 6BIO 37.5

On August 10 she wrote to physicians and ministers in Colorado: 6BIO 38.1

I have a message for the brethren who contemplate establishing a sanitarium at Canon City. The Lord forbids, at this time, any movement that would tend to draw to other enterprises the sympathy and support that are needed just now by the Boulder Sanitarium. This is a critical time for that institution.—Record of Progress and An Earnest Appeal In Behalf of the Boulder-Colorado Sanitarium, 32.

To those who would now solicit means from our people for the establishment of a sanitarium in Canon City, I am bidden to say, Stop where you are and consider the necessities that have been laid before you a [sanitarium on the school grounds in Takoma Park, a sanitarium to be built near Nashville, and assistance to the school at Huntsville]. These necessities demand attention. Do not draw means from our people to establish something that is not a positive necessity. Let not your zeal abate, but do those things that the Lord would have you do.—Ibid., 36. 6BIO 38.2

She urged that their ambitions should be focused on the institution already established, until it was free from debt. Boulder Sanitarium was to receive all the help that could be given to it (Ibid.). 6BIO 38.3