Letterman Army Hospital

The site you are approaching is marked by the large, modern buildings of the Letterman Digital Arts Center, but for nearly a century, this ground held the primary medical facility for the United States Army on the West Coast. Established in eighteen ninety-nine to treat soldiers returning from the Spanish-American War, the complex became known as Letterman Army Hospital. It was named for Major Jonathan Letterman, a Civil War surgeon who revolutionized battlefield medicine by organizing the first systematic ambulance corps.