February 11, 1911

West Virginia authorizes the tuberculosis sanitarium later known as Hopemont

The West Virginia Legislature passed an act authorizing a state tuberculosis sanitarium on February 11; the governor approved it on February 18. The authorization followed years of campaigning by the Anti-Tuberculosis League of West Virginia and its executive secretary, Dr. Harriet B. Jones, who had grown up in Terra Alta. The selected farm near Terra Alta belonged to Jones’s brother-in-law, W. T. White. White and his wife, Harriet’s sister Adaline Jones White, executed a deed conveying the property to the state on November 11, 1911. The institution became West Virginia’s first state tuberculosis sanitarium and was later known as Hopemont.