Hammond General Hospital opened at Point Lookout, Maryland, in August 1862 and was named for Surgeon General William A. Hammond. Built to accommodate 1,400 men, the massive structure stood on piles about two to three feet above ground and covered nearly all the area between the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay. It measured well over 500 feet in diameter and had 16 wings, each 175 by 25 feet, radiating from an open central area like the spokes of a giant wheel. One wing held the hospital offices and the others served as wards, all connected at the center by a covered circular walkway. Within the central hub stood four buildings measuring 77 feet by 25 feet: the chapel, half-diet kitchen, library and reading room, and baggage room. An elevated 20,000-gallon water tank, 16 feet in diameter and 30 feet high, occupied the center of the hub when completed in late spring 1863, intended to flood the hospital in the event of fire. The hospital officially closed in August 1865, and its structures were soon sold, demolished, or auctioned. Before the Civil War, Point Lookout had been a popular waterfront recreation community with a hotel, wharf, outbuildings, and about one hundred cottages on the low, flat, sandy tip of land, but recreation declined as the country prepared for war. About a mile north stood Camp Hoffman, the nation’s largest Confederate prisoner-of-war encampment, through whose gate more than 52,000 Confederate prisoners passed.