Savage in Bend

“Recently, a local told me she was born on Hospital Hill. I had no idea what she meant. Do you know the story?”

Absolutely! When I moved to Bend, I heard the same thing. People born on a hill? Bend was a smaller town not so long ago, sure, but the citizens weren’t that backwards, were they?

Perched on a rocky knoll downtown, the place once known as Hospital Hill seems to hold a special place for many longtime locals. This “hill” was the location of the original hospital. As most of us know, long before Bend was a bustling tourist town it was a busy frontier lumber settlement. In fact, explosive population growth has often been an issue in Bend’s history. The town grew from just over 500 people in 1910 to more than 5,000 by 1920. Lumber mills, new businesses, and new families brought the need for more services, especially reliable medical care. And so begins the story of Hospital Hill.

In late 1917, five nuns from St. Joseph of Tipton, Indiana, arrived in Bend with a mission to establish a hospital. The women who came were Sisters Theresa Thistlewaite, De Sales Burns, Evangelista McKenzie, Blanche Ress and Brendan Donegan. At first, they operated an emergency facility out of a small wooden rented house near Mirror Pond on Broadway Avenue, but they knew from the beginning this small setup would have trouble keeping up with the injuries from the mills, let alone the rest of the population. Realizing this, the Sisters, with the help of Father Luke Sheehan of St. Francis Catholic Church (yes, the same location that would become McMenamins), looked for a larger and more permanent location.

In 1919, Father Sheehan purchased five acres on a rocky hill above Franklin Avenue for $1,100 and gifted it to the Sisters. This site quickly became known as Hospital Hill. By September 1921, construction began on a new brick building. It was named St. Charles, honoring both Bishop Charles O’Reilly of Baker City who had helped to bring the Sisters to Oregon, and Saint Charles Borromeo, an Italian Catholic Archbishop from Italy in the 1500s. The new hospital opened in 1922 and was built for about $29,850, a lot of money back then.

The original St. Charles was also small, but it immediately changed the fabric of Bend. It offered more hospital beds, a surgical suite, and definitely more space than the Sisters’ previous makeshift location. Still, it wasn’t long before the demand for health care outstripped capacity once again. In 1934, an expansion added more beds, bassinets for newborns, an X-ray department, and a chapel for patients and staff. The Sisters worked hard to ensure that St. Charles became the region’s trusted health care center.

When World War II arrived, the hospital played an unexpected role. The U.S. Army established Camp Abbot south of Bend to train combat engineers. To care for military personnel, a 25-bed annex known as “Prague Hall” was built on Hospital Hill in 1942. After the war, the annex remained part of the hospital complex, increasing its capacity to about 60 beds.

By the late 1940s, the original brick hospital was showing its age. Bend’s population was booming once again, and the town needed a modern facility. Community members raised funds for a new hospital, and in 1950, construction began on a much larger and more modern structure next to the original structure. Completed at a cost of nearly $900,000, the new St. Charles Memorial Hospital opened in 1951. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, expansions continued, and by 1971, the hospital offered nearly 100 beds.

By the late 1960s, it was already clear that even these upgrades wouldn’t keep up with Bend’s growth. Sister Catherine Hellmann, administrator of St. Charles at the time, led efforts to plan a new state-of-the-art facility on the east side of town, near Pilot Butte. A new nonprofit corporation, St. Charles Memorial Hospital, Inc., was formed to guide the project.

The dream became reality in 1975, when the new St. Charles Medical Center, the one we know now, opened its doors. At more than 160,000 square feet, it offered 164 beds and modern medical technology. As we can see, it’s still expanding. With over 5,000 employees, St. Charles is also currently the largest employer in Bend, and it all started with five forward-thinking Sisters from Indiana!

The old hospital buildings on Hospital Hill stood empty. In 1977, the Sisters of St. Joseph transferred ownership to the city. The buildings were demolished and eventually redeveloped. Today, passersby will see The Newberry (a Hilton brand) Hotel on the spot.

This article appears in Source Weekly July 31, 2025.