Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation
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The Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation is a rehabilitation facility located in Warm Springs, Georgia.
History of the springs
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, named by Time Magazine “the foremost statesman and political leader” of the 20th Century, founded the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation in 1927, but the history of the place started long before that.
In fact, the known history of the warm springs had its recorded beginnings with Native Americans, whose tribal confrontations often led injured warriors to the water at the base of Pine Mountain for what they considered its healing properties. In the years that followed white settlement, the warm springs gave rise to a spa, where water emerging at 900 gallons per minute and 88 degrees year-round helped turn the place into a well-known stagecoach stop. Influential southern leaders like John C. Calhoun of South Carolina and Henry Clay of Kentucky are known to have visited the therapeutic baths located about 70 miles southwest of Atlanta before the Civil War.
Nearing the turn of the century, well-to-do families from the area began erecting summer homes and The Meriwether Inn, a popular, 120-room facility, opened on the hill overlooking the springs. A large public swimming pool was also installed to permit better access to the warm, buoyant waters and the place became host to Georgia high society through the early 1900s.
By the time FDR, a well-known New York politician and aristocrat, arrived on October 3, 1924, three years into his personal battle with polio, the Inn had seen its better days. Nevertheless, one of its owners, George Foster Peabody, a wealthy banker and personal friend, had written FDR about the substantial improvement another local polio victim enjoyed while swimming daily in the warm water, knowing Roosevelt was anxious for anything that might help him walk again.
Sparked by FDR’s legacy, the March of Dimes, one of history’s greatest fundraising efforts, led to extensive medical research and the Salk Vaccine (1954), which effectively eradicated new cases of polio in the United States by the mid-1960s.
As a result, a shifting focus evolved and the adjacent Georgia Rehabilitation Center was created in 1964 to provide vocational rehabilitation for persons with disabilities throughout the State of Georgia. Ten years later, the state assumed operation of the Foundation hospital; turning it into a medical rehabilitation facility that today specializes in brain injury, spinal cord injury, stroke, orthopedic and general rehabilitation services. In 1980, the separate medical and vocational programs were merged into one comprehensive, state-managed rehab facility.
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