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Search for a Cure: Life at Valmora

Valmora Industrial Sanatorium

TB patient in front of one of the Valmora cottages, 1918. [Photo]

During the late 1800s, the sanatoria movement, representing a new treatment for tuberculosis, arrived in the United States from Europe. At the time tuberculosis was the leading cause of death around the world. Until the discovery of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis and the development of a successful drug therapy in the 1940s, sanatoria were one of the few treatment options that seemed to provide a "cure" for what was called, "the white death." With characteristics of both a hospital and a hotel, a sanatorium would provide a combination of sunlight, diet, and light exercise for the patients who would come and spend months, sometimes even years.

TB patients resting at Valmora, circa 1919 [Photo]

New Mexico was the destination of many health seekers beginning in the late 1890s. One of the best known and most successful of the sanatoria in the United States first opened its doors in 1905, in Valmora, New Mexico. Originally called Valmora Ranch Sanatorium, in 1910 it was reorganized as a non-profit corporation and renamed Valmora Industrial Sanatorium. Sponsored by a group of large corporations for their employees, Valmora developed into a partially self-sufficient community with a hospital, patient cottages, housing for medical and support staff, a dining hall, laundry, general store, post office, and a recreation center with a theater. It had a dairy herd, a flock of chickens, and a vegetable garden. Water came from a nearby spring and electricity was supplied by its two generators. Valmora even became a flag stop on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad.

TB patient on rack trying to drain fluid from his gangrenous lungs. Valmora, circa 1930s [Photo]

Valmora's last medical director, Dr. Carl Gellenthien was a physician at Valmora from 1927 until April, 1989. Dr. Gellenthien, a one-time patient at the sanatorium, practiced medicine at Valmora and throughout Mora County, while conducting tuberculosis research. As he prepared for retirement after more than sixty years of practice, Dr. Gellenthien entrusted his personal papers and the sanatorium's records to the New Mexico Health Historical Collection. His daughter, Editha Gellenthien Bartley, added to the collection after her father's death in November, 1989.

In 2006, the New Mexico Health Historical Collection received a grant from the New Mexico Historical Records Advisory Board to process the Valmora/ Gellenthien materials and make them available for research. In November 2007, the New Mexico Health Historical Collection will host an exhibit titled, "Search for a Cure: Life at Valmora," and a lecture by Dr. Jake Spidle about the history of tuberculosis in New Mexico. An online inventory of the materials can be accessed on the Rocky Mountain Online Archive.


Coming to Valmora:
Scrapbook Photographs

Meeting a Valmora patient at the train station, ca 1920s [Photo]
Start of the road to Valmora, ca 1920s [Photo]
Fording the river to reach Valmora, ca 1920s [Photo]
 Postcard from a tinted photograph of the Valmora Industrial Sanatorium, ca 1920 [Image]