A week ago, I wrote about the conditions found in the Lassen County Hospital in 1914. I thought I do a brief follow up as to what happened to it. Lassen County and Thomas “Ab”Ramsey did a property exchange wherein the county received thirty acres adjacent to Richmond Road, portion of which would become the home of Roosevelt School, as well. Actually, for a little bit trivia, the school site was designated to become a cemetery but that is another story.

Ramsey rented the hold hospital as a residence and it remained a rental until 1923, when A.H. and Grace Andrews purchased it. In 1927, the W.D. Haws family acquired and made extensive and necessary improvements to the structure. The building was destroyed by a flu fire on January 12, 1933. Little could be done to save the structure as the water pipes were frozen.

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On March 17, 1859 the Susanville Post Office opened for business. At its helm was Isaac Roop who served as its first postmaster. When it opened, postal authorities assumed that it was in Utah Territory’s jurisdiction and the earliest postal cancels are marked, “Susanville, U.T.” In 1937, after nearly eighty years of being in existence, it finally got a home of its own. At that time, postal authorities purchased a lot on North Lassen Street from Stanley Wade for $6,750. Shortly thereafter construction began on the post office and opened its doors to the public on June 1, 1938.

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Just as there was a movement in the early 1900s to build a new courthouse, the same issue was applied to the Lassen County Hospital. The two-story, twelve-room facility was built in 1883 for $620. It was located next to the Susan River and far enough away from the town proper should a quarantine be necessary.

In essence over time the hospital devolved into a poor folks home. In the campaign to build a new hospital the Lassen Weekly Mail reported the following conditions of the facility in 1914: “The operating room is on the first floor—at least they call it an operating room. It must make a doctor’s hair stand on end every time he enters it. Septicemia stares a surgeon in the face every time he performs even a minor operation. When your mind thinks of a operating room of a hospital the picture presented to the mind is an airy room with tiled floors, enameled walls and ceiling and every facility for cleanliness, but if you have any such picture in your mind when you visit the operating room of the Lassen County Hospital it will be rudely shattered. The room is small, has a wooden floor and the walls are papered the ceiling an ordinary wooden ceiling. The operating table is an improvised one and of course lacks all conveniences which a surgeon should have in order to do good work. The room is kept clean as possible, but you speak of cleanliness in the operating room of a hospital it does not mean the mere absence of dirt visible to the naked eye. It means that every possibility of germs or any foreign matter that could by any possibility infect the patient are removed. In no possible way could the operating room at the Lassen County Hospital be put in condition that a surgeon would even consider safe.” The following year the voters approved a bond measure for a new courthouse and hospital.

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Yesterday, I duly noted the large number of gas/service stations, well there was a large concentration of bars in the uptown district. From Weatherlow Street to Roop Street there was: Manuel’s, Marion’s, Round Up Room, the 802, State, Pioneer, Western Room and the B&B. There was the Bank Club, but that was before my time. Then, if you wanted to be discreet, you could get a drink at the Grand Cafe. Today, there is only one, Lassen Ale Works at the Pioneer.

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Seasoned residents will recall that it seemed like there was a gas station on nearly every corner of Susanville’s Main Street back in the 1950s and 1960s. Actually, the proper term at that time was “service station.” If one approached Susanville from the west, one of the first items they would see, was not one, but two service stations at the intersection of Main and Roop Streets.  At 504 Main Street was a Union 76 Station and kitty-corner and next to Doyle Motors was a Shell Station.

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