Anyone visiting Mesa Verde National Park on Thursday was treated to some of America’s best-preserved ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites and could receive a shot in the arm for the coronavirus.
The goal of “Shot in the Park” was to give visitors and staff members convenient access to a vaccine, the one-shot Johnson & Johnson. Shots were given from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Spruce Tree Terrace at Chapin Mesa. No appointment was necessary, and the vaccine was free. A park entrance fee was required.
The public clinic was organized in partnership with the Montezuma County Health Department, Aramark and the national park.
The vaccination clinic was held in the building that previously housed the Aileen Nusbaum Hospital.
Having the clinic at the old hospital site “is a wonderful nod to park history,” said Laurie Smith, assistant chief of interpretation and visitor services.
According to park history, Aileen Nusbaum, the wife of then-Superintendent Jesse Nusbaum, was an army nurse in France during World War I. She was eager to build a hospital near park headquarters, particularly given the park's remote location and precarious roads.
She and her husband lobbied the surgeon general and Congress to increase the park’s funding for employee and visitor health. In the early 1920s, Congress allotted $50 annually for Mesa Verde to purchase medical and drug supplies. In 1926, Congress allocated the money to build a hospital.
Aileen Nusbaum’s own architectural design, called Pueblo Revival, was adopted for the hospital and other administration buildings. The hospital contained six beds, a doctor’s office, an operating room and a small kitchen.
“Routine treatment was done, there was an operating room and babies were born there,” Smith said in an interview Wednesday.
Typical illnesses and injuries treated in the 1920s included turned ankles, body bruises, abdominal complaints, boils and insect bites, according to park archives.
When a visitor came down with appendicitis in 1931, he was lucky that then-Secretary of the Interior Ray Wilbur, a doctor-turned-Cabinet-officer, was visiting and stepped in to remove the man’s appendix in the hospital operating room.
In 1963, the hospital was converted to a snack bar, gift shop and small grocery store. Today, it is known as Spruce Tree Terrace. People visiting the gift shop, should look for the large multipane window on the north side. The window illuminated the operating room in a time when electric lighting was not reliable.
The Spruce Tree Terrace diner is closed this year to cut down on gatherings, and Aramark offered the space to hold the vaccine clinic.
