Description
[Colfax and other places in California: 1910-1926]. 615 photographs, varying sizes from 2.25 x 3.25 to 5 x 7 inches, with
a few larger format images, in two oblong, string-tied albums.
Background
Photograph albums containing nearly 620 images of sanitaria founded by Dr. Robert Alway Peers in and around Colfax, California,
the activities of their patients, and the lives of the head doctor, his family, and staff. Peers was originally from Toronto
and settled in California at the end of the 19th century. He purchased a property Colfax in 1907 that served as a small, but
continually expanding sanitarium from 1911 until after World War II. After brief service in the medical corps of the U.S.
Army during the Great War, Peers returned to Colfax in 1919 and established the Weimar Joint Sanitarium, which took in tuberculosis
patients from fifteen northern and central California counties. In addition to his duties as the head doctor at several sanitaria
in the state, Peers was also a member of the State Board of Health from 1915 to 1932 and the Mayor of Colfax from 1922 to
1945. The photographs in the first, larger album which contains nearly 350 images, depict the first hospital that Peers established
in Colfax and some of its expansions. "Less than ten years into his time at Colfax, Dr. Peers established a hospital in town
for the treatment of TB. He soon increased the bed capacity by adding cottages on the hillside adjacent to the hospital. A
short while later he expanded further by adding a group of cottages for patients in an area among the pine trees called The
Colony a short distance from town" -- Staab.