In 1798, the U.S. Treasury Department began building Marine Hospitals in U.S. port cities to provide free care to merchant seaman from around the world. A hospital was built just west of Mountain Lake in 1875.

In 1912, the Marine Hospitals were reorganized under the Surgeon General as the U.S. Public Health Service with an expanded mission - improving the health of entire communities. The renamed Public Health Service Hospital (PHSH) evolved to serve immigrants, the U.S. Coast Guard, Native Americans, and those suffering from contagious diseases.

The original wood-frame building was replaced in 1932 by a 36-acre campus designed by Treasury Department architect James Wetmore. A 480-bed main hospital building was accompanied by surgeons’ homes, laboratories, a power plant, and nurses’ quarters. The facilities operated for nearly sixty years, closing in 1981. After being briefly used by the Army’s Defense Language Institute as a training facility, the hospital was vacant for two decades.