Celebrating 150 years at Stockton Boulevard and X Street — a history of serving Sacramento and the surrounding communities UC Davis Medical Center

1849 – In the Gold Rush era, Sacramento’s first hospitals are small, for-profit and exorbitantly priced.

1850 – Most of what is now downtown Sacramento floods and cholera kills thousands, sparking a public outcry for a hospital to care for the poor. The Sacramento City Council appoints a hospital committee to create a plan.

1850 – The first Sacramento City Hospital is being built when it is destroyed by a storm.

1853 – A Sacramento County hospital for the indigent opens at the corner of 10th and L streets on what is now a part of Capitol Park.

1860s – Sacramento County buys 65 acres on Stockton Boulevard, at what is now the corner of Stockton and X Street, for $11,000.

1870 – Construction of the 216-bed, $80,000 hospital building is completed. 

1871 – The new Sacramento County Hospital opens for indigent patients at Stockton Boulevard and X Street.

1878 – The Sacramento County Hospital is destroyed by fire.

1879 – Another new Sacramento County Hospital is built and opens on the same site. It has a two-story main admin­istration building with five wings — one for dining, the rest as wards — and accommo­dates 150–160 beds. 

1872 to 1904 – The Sacramento County Hospital is led by County Physician Dr. George Amos White, who initiates the use of spinal anesthesia in surgery, brings in one of the first X-ray machines in the state and helps develop the first clinical laboratory in the region. 

1879 – A large farm and vineyard surrounds the hospital and supplies food for patients and staff. It includes four acres of vineyards, six acres of gardens, 10 pasture acres and a few acres of orchards. The strongest patients are required to work the farm and garden in the early years. The farm lasts into the 20th century. 

1891 – The county authorizes burials for indigent patients on the hospital grounds. The first burial takes place in 1897, the last in 1927. (In 2004, the remains of 72 people are reinterred at the Sacramento County Cemetery on Fruitridge Road).

1906 – The University of California secures land to start an agricultural farming school in Davisville (now Davis).

1908 – The University Farm in Davis begins offering classes. The following year, it starts a three-year non-degree vocational program with 18 students enrolled.

1915 – A citizens’ group sets down the foundation for a modernized hospital in Sacramento, with proposed plans to remake or rebuild the county hospital and to have it grow to a 500-bed facility. Changes to the plans continue until 1929.

1918 – A full-time resident superintendent takes over as administrator of the County Hospital and visiting physicians are added to the staff.

1918 to 1919 – The global influenza pandemic hits Sacramento and the Central Valley hard. The County Hospital turns over two wards to the Red Cross to care for flu patients.

1922 – The first four-year degree program is offered by the University of California at the University Farm campus in Davis and the college is renamed the Northern Branch of the College of Agriculture for the University of California.

1929 – A new hospital building with new pavilions opens, at a cost of $1 million.

1932 – A home for aged women opens at the rear of the County Hospital. A home for aged men opens seven miles to the south. Both homes are run by the hospital to care for the poor.

1944 – Doctors from the County Hospital and around the region sponsor, organize and staff the 51st Evacuation Hospital. They support U.S. troops in Italy and France that year, then in Germany in 1945. Among its duties there, the unit treats freed prisoners of war. It would be thanked by the War Department for its service, skill and valor.

1945 – County Hospital superintendent Dr. Leo Farrell introduces the “wonder drug” penicillin to the Sacramento region.

Late 1940s – Sacramento County Hospital serves as the polio center for inland Northern California, housing patients in its Isolation Ward 21.

1950 – A six-story medical center is built incorporating some of the old building into the new one.

1959 – The University of California officially names Davis as its seventh campus in the UC system.

1961 – Graduate division programs are started by UC Davis. Air conditioning is installed on the top four floors of the main hospital building.

1964 – A four-year modernization program begins for the Sacramento County hospital. It costs $10.5 million and includes a new eight-story East Wing with 216 beds. The County Hospital becomes a community medical center open to anyone in the Sacramento Valley, not just people unable to pay for medical care.

1966 – The creation of the UC Davis School of Medicine begins. UC Davis and Sacramento County sign an affiliation agreement for the Sacramento County Hospital to be the medical faculty’s primary clinical teaching facility.

1968 – The UC Davis School of Medicine opens and welcomes its first 48 students.

The hospital changes its name to the Sacramento Medical Center, and a new operating room and emergency room open in the hospital to expand treatments available for patients.

The hospital’s longtime, large, and occasionally loud neighbor, the California State Fair, moves to Cal Expo.

1973 – The University of California Regents buys the hospital for $1, making it the permanent teaching hospital for the School of Medicine. The Regents and UC Davis also purchase other buildings, land, equipment and supplies for the fair market value of $8 million.

1974 – A Regional Burn Center opens in the hospital. The Burn Center will later partner with Shriners Hospitals for Children to care for pediatric burn patients.

1977 – A Regional Poison Center opens in the hospital.

1978 – The Sacramento County Hospital officially changes its name to the University of California, Davis Medical Center.

1981 – The hospital opens the Center of Aging and Health, the first geriatric outpatient service to be part of a university teaching hospital.

1982 – The new eight-story University Tower opens, expanding the hospital to the east and adding 146 beds, additional intensive care units and more modernized medical facilities.

1984 – UC Davis Medical Center is named the Sacramento County Trauma Center, and the Life Flight medical air ambulance service begins operating from the medical center to transport patients from across the hospital’s 33-county service area in Northern California.

1987 – UC Davis Medical Center joins the Children’s Miracle Network.

1988 – UC Davis Medical Center is designated a level I Trauma Center, the only one in inland Northern California.

1989 – The hospital and its related services qualify for membership in the National Association of Children’s Hospitals and Related Institutions, and the hospital is designated as a “children’s hospital within a hospital.”

1990 – The Ambulatory Surgery Center opens.

1991 – The UC Davis Cancer Center opens.

1992 – UC Davis Heart Center is created. UC Davis Health establishes its first telemedicine link. The connection with Colusa Community Hospital allows many women to stay in their own community while receiving expert delivery services.

1994 – The UC Davis Health system is established, integrating business operations and strategic planning for UC Davis’ physician group, medical school and medical center. The first community clinic beyond the Sacramento health campus opens in Placerville.

1996 – The use of telecommunications technology to improve access to health care in rural communities evolves into the award-winning Telehealth Program.

1997 – Shriners Hospitals for Children opens on the UC Davis Sacramento campus, across X Street from the medical center with services supported by UC Davis medical experts.

1997 – UC Davis Medical Center becomes one of the first six hospitals in the nation designated as a Magnet™ Center of Excellence for nursing.

1998 – UC Davis establishes the MIND Institute, a unique interdis­ciplinary institute, to conduct research and provide clinical programs focused on autism and neurodevelop­mental disorders. The Lawrence J. Ellison Am­bulatory Care Center opens to deliver outpatient services and treatments.

1999 – The state-of-the-art 14-story Davis Tower opens, creating a model inpatient environment. The Telemedicine Learning Center is established to train practitioners and administrators throughout Northern California. It is recognized as one of the most successful programs in the nation. UC Davis’ pediatric intensive care unit establishes a novel telemedicine link to the emergency department of Mercy Medical Center in Redding.

2001 – The MIND Institute breaks ground on a new building to house its research on the UC Davis Sacramento Campus.

2002 – The UC Davis Cancer Center achieves National Cancer Institute designation.

2003 – The MIND Institute’s 110,000-square-foot complex opens.

2006 – The School of Medicine’s Education Building opens on the UC Davis Sacramento campus, across the street from UC Davis Medical Center, bringing all four years of medical school activities to Sacramento.

The Clinical and Translational Science Center is established with $24.8 million from the National Institutes of Health. UC Davis is one of the first 12 institutions in the country to receive this NIH grant.

2007 – The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation donates $100 million in founding support to launch the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at UC Davis. It is the largest grant for nursing education in the country.

2010 – The UC Davis Medical Center Surgery and Emergency Services Pavilion opens and becomes the hospital’s new front door.

The Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing welcomes its first students.

The UC Davis Institute for Regenerative Cures opens on the Sacramento campus in a refurbished building from the former Sacramento County Fairgrounds, becoming the university’s hub for stem cell science and research.

2012 – The UC Davis Cancer Center earns “comprehensive” status from the National Cancer Institute, joining only 40 other U.S. institutions with this designation.

2016 – Grateful patient Ernest E. Tschannen gives a record $38.5 million in gifts and pledges to support eye care and create the Ernest E. Tschannen Eye Institute (scheduled to open in 2021). The donations make Tschannen the largest individual donor to UC Davis in the university’s history.

2017 – Betty Irene Moore Hall opens on the Sacramento campus, completing the health education core of UC Davis and promoting innovative, interprofessional education.

The University of California Firearms Violence Prevention and Research Center is launched.

2018 – The development of Aggie Square on the Sacramento campus is announced.

UC Davis Medical Center launches its farm-to-fork food sustainability program and wins national awards for quality and sustainability.

UC Davis announces plans for the Sacramento Rehabilitation Hospital at UC Davis Health, creating a second hospital on the Sacramento campus. It will be focused on helping patients transition between inpatient services and their homes.

2019 – The six-story North Addition Office Building opens with state-of-the-art conference rooms, an outdoor meeting space and office space for health system and hospital leadership and providers.

2020 – Partnerships across the university help the UC Davis School of Medicine become a national leader in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, treating thousands of the region’s sickest patients, helping create innovations in care, treatments and testing, and participating in crucial vaccine clinical trials.

Coming in 2021 – The Ernest E. Tschannen Eye Institute is scheduled to open.

Construction is expected to start on the California Tower of the UC Davis Medical Center.

The 150th anniversary of the hospital opening at Stockton Boulevard and X Street is celebrated.

On July 1, ground is broken for a second hospital on the campus, the UC Davis Rehabilitation Hospital, located at 49th Street and Broadway. The hospital is expected to open to patients in 2023.