In the 1900s, Stuart and its surrounding region were known as “a healing sanitarium” because balmy temperatures, endless sunshine, and salty air were believed to restore health, but the 1920s land boom and population growth created a need for a local hospital, especially for emergencies and maternity care. In 1926 Carroll Dunscombe donated a wood-frame house on Coconut Avenue and 5th Street for a nonprofit hospital, ten thousand dollars was raised for supplies, and in August the St. Lucie Sanitarium opened with a five-bed ward downstairs, five private rooms upstairs, and a nursery. Because segregation denied African-Americans treatment there, a rented house in East Stuart served as a separate hospital beginning in 1933. During the Great Depression both facilities struggled financially as patients could not pay their bills. In 1937 Lake Janet, the one-acre pond named for Dunscombe’s wife and later called Hospital Lake or Hospital Pond, overflowed after ten inches of rain fell in a day, and Dr. Van Williams Burns paddled to work in a rowboat. By 1938 the community recognized the need for a larger hospital to care for all citizens regardless of race, and William S. Barstow of Jupiter donated one hundred thousand dollars to build one on six-and-a-half acres of city-owned land on the St. Lucie River, while the Reed family of Hobe Sound donated equipment funds and many county residents contributed to building and operating funds. In March 1939 the new one hundred fifty thousand dollar, twenty-five-bed Martin County Hospital opened with a delivery room, nursery, lab, x-ray room, and two operating rooms, and it continues today as Martin Health System while the old St. Lucie Sanitarium became a private residence again.