Salida had railroad shops to repair locomotives and rolling stock. Railroaders needed repairs too - it was a dangerous occupation in those times - and so Salida was a sensible location for a medical facility.

The Denver & Rio Grande Railroad Hospital was built in Salida in 1885. It burned down in 1899, and was replaced with a new building that still stands as the core of the current hospital. In 1925, a two-story patient wing was added to the hospital.

After World War II, the railroad began cutting back on its mountain operations, and the narrow-gauge lines from Salida were abandoned in the 1950s. Diesel locomotives didn't need nearly as much maintenance as their steam-powered ancestors, and the railroad cut back on its Salida labor force to the extent that "abandoning" its Salida hospital made corporate sense.

So in 1962, the railroad put the hospital up for sale. Two outside companies offered to buy it, but a group of local leaders raised money to purchase the hospital. They ran it as a private corporation until 1976, when the Salida Hospital District, which can collect local property taxes, was formed to acquire and operate the hospital.

The district bought the hospital from the local owners. In the early 1980s, the hospital was expanded for a new intensive care unit, laboratory, emergency room, and two additional patient rooms. In 1989, it was rechristened as the Heart of the Rockies Regional Medical Center.

E.Q. (with some extensive cribbing from the "History" portion of the HRRMC website. The photo is from a 1920s picture postcard in the Salida Regional Library Local History Archives.)