Encyclopedia of Arkansas
Sparks Regional Medical Center in Fort Smith (Sebastian County), founded in 1887, was Arkansas’s first hospital. As of 2009, it serves a population of more than 350,000 in the surrounding eleven-county area and offers a full range of medical specialties and advanced diagnostic facilities, together with the newest technology, expert medical care, and clinical research.
The hospital got its start following an accident at the railroad yard in Fort Smith, in which a stranger named Gerhardt was injured. He was taken to a boarding house and left. The rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church, the Reverend George Degen, found him in a worsened condition with no one to care for him. He subsequently collected $500 from merchants along Garrison Avenue, rented a building, and established St. John’s Hospital.
In 1890, the hospital was incorporated by the state, and a board was established with Judge Isaac Parker of Fort Smith frontier fame as president. In 1899, St. John’s and a second hospital, City Charity, consolidated under the name Belle Point, named after a spot at the junction of the Arkansas and Poteau rivers; it did not retain its Episcopal affiliation. Community leader George Sparks bequeathed $25,000 in 1908 in memory of his wife, and the name was changed to Sparks Memorial Hospital.
Over the next forty years, Sparks was the Arkansas River Valley’s premier healthcare provider, and, in 1953, a new 150-bed facility was opened. Just thirteen years later, bed capacity reached 326.
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