El Camino Health

In the mid-1950s, when orchards and fields in the Los Altos and Mountain View area were quickly turning into suburbs and commercial enclaves, a group of physicians and concerned citizens banded together to establish a much-needed community hospital. The few existing local hospitals were at capacity; hospitals to the north and south were badly overcrowded. The best and fairest way, they decided, was to form a hospital district and levy a tax so the cost would be shared among the population of the entire area.

Voters approved the formation of the district in 1956 by a 12-to-1 margin. The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors appointed a five-member board. Its first decision was the selection of a 20-acre orchard on Grant Road in Mountain View as the site for the new hospital. The name "El Camino Hospital" was also chosen. In 1957, voters approved a $7.3 million bond issue, again by a large margin, to finance the building and operation of the hospital.

Construction of the four-story hospital began in 1958. Overseeing the building was the hospital's first administrator R. Edwin Hawkins, who went on to lead the hospital for 25 years. "The building of El Camino Hospital was the biggest thing in town," the late Mr. Hawkins said in a 1999 interview. "People were willing to do anything to support the hospital. There was real electricity in the air."

Proof of this was the formation in 1958 of the El Camino Hospital Auxiliary with 1,000 members. This was three years before the hospital opened. The first medical staff, 21 members strong, was established in 1960. By 1961, all necessary preparations had been made and the hospital admitted its first patients on September 1, 1961.v