Enloe Hospital and its Log Ambulance

Dr. Newton Thomas Enloe

    Born at Barton, Lamar County, Missouri on February 23, 1872, earned his M.D. degree from the Missouri Medical College in St. Louis where he graduated in 1895. After graduation, he took several post-graduate courses at the Chicago Postgraduate School and the New York Polyclinic.

   He worked for the Sierra Lumber Company for six years, and it was through them that he went to California in 1901. He worked as chief surgeon for the lumber company, which sold out to the Diamond Match Company. In 1907 he left for Chico and began his general practice clinic. He treated lumberjacks of the camp for a fee of $1.00 per month. The lumber company provided board for himself, his 2 year old son Newton, Jr. and his 16 year old sister Emma.

In the early 1900s, this was a logging area (it still is, but much less now). Logs were cut in the mountains and sent down a water flume to the mills in Chico.

 Dr. Newton T. Enloe had a hospital in a logging area and another near the bottom of the flume

Dr. Enloe would transport patients down the flume in the log ambulance.

Dr. Enloe, his son Newt in his lap, his sister Emma.

    His first hospital, was a small five bedroom home, which he built with his own hands of scrap lumber, and then in 1913 he began to build a small thirty-eight bed hospital, which opened September of the same year, located on Flume Street. Dr Enloe performed the first operation at his new Chico hospital using a nail from the local hardware store to pin a hip fracture. Health care has come a long, long way since then.

    Dr. N.T. Enloe passed away in the hospital he built on December 21, 1954, at the age of 82.

    In the old days, Enloe's emergency room was something of an afterthought. Tucked in the basement, the room stood empty unless an ambulance driver pulled up and rang the buzzer, summoning a nurse from upstairs. She would assess the patient, then call a doctor if necessary.

    The transformation began in the early 1970s, when administrators asked Janet Ellis, R.N., who has since retired as Vice-President of Nursing, to redesign the way emergency care was delivered at the hospital . "Getting rid of the buzzer system was one of my first major accomplishments," she recalls proudly.

    Enloe Hospital teamed up with Butte College in 1972 to train emergency medical technicians. By 1978, the hospital had started a full-time ambulance service. In 1985, the hospital added FlightCare, the emergency helicopter service, which transported 20-30 patients a month, growing to about 80 a month today.  

    The Enloe Hospital is still in use today, and has grown to a 391-bed state-of-the-art hospital, now called the Enloe Medical Center. With seven locations throughout the Chico area, serves over 400,000 residents in a six county region.

Keywords: Enloe, Chico, Log

Last Revision Date: 4/30/10 - 8:45 PM