The oldest hospital in Dallas, Parkland Hospital Hospital was opened May 19, 1894, in a group of wooden buildings on a seventeen-acre wooded tract called Parkland, at Oak Lawn and Maple Avenues. An ambulance was purchased, but it was two years before a horse was acquired to pull it. A meningitis epidemic in 1911 underscored the need for larger and better hospital facilities, and the first unit of the present brick building was built in 1913, the same year the city-county hospital system was created. (In 1940 a small downtown Dallas hotel burned and fire trapped many fleeing residents. Dallas Police Officer, Earl O. Cullum drove an emergency ambulance from the scene, loaded with bodies in canvas slings, some living, some already dead. Parkland received them all, and quickly cared for those still living.)
In 1954 the new seven-story Parkland was opened on Harry Hines Blvd., admitting nearly 15,000 patients in its first year. Following a tornado in 1957, Parkland received 175 emergency patients in two hours; then in 1963 came its most famous patients: President John F. Kennedy was shot in downtown Dallas and died soon after he arrived at Parkland; Texas Governor John Connally was severely wounded, but survived at Parkland. Two days later the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, was shot in the basement of the Dallas Police station, and died at Parkland while being treated.
In 1962, the Parkland burn center was established, and in 1964 air-conditioning was installed. In 1965, Parkland handled 130,000 emergency cases, and 180,000 in 1966. (Earl O. Cullum’s wife, Louise, was taken to Parkland after a severe brain injury following a car accident in 1973, and died there.) Parkland added a new emergency room in 1977 and modernized it in the early 1980s. It now has become the largest burn-treatment center in the United States, developing new methods for treating burns. Twenty-one emergency patients were treated at Parkland following a Delta flight crash in 1985.
Parkland’s first branch clinic was opened in 1989, with other branches and mobile clinics to follow in eight Dallas neighborhoods. In 1993 Parkland handled over a half-million emergency cases, and admitted 47,000 patients on a $315 million budget. It now has 940 beds, and is considered one of the best public hospitals in the nation.
By Earl Cullum
