May 23, 1912: The opening of the Nopeming Sanitorium

On this day in Duluth in 1912, the Nopeming Asylum opened for the first time. The day before a caravan of horse-drawn carriages carried nearly 50 very sick Duluthians from downtown to the new facility, built ten miles southwest of the Zenith City in the middle of the woods. (In Ojibwe, Nopeming means “out in the woods” or “in the forest.”) The driving force behind Nopeming was Dr. Edward L. Tuohy of Duluth’s St. Mary’s hospital, who had in years prior established a major medical laboratory at his home institution and developed a reputation in the city as a major public health advocate. Tuohy was convinced that the Zenith City deserved a world-class sanatorium to treat its infected denizens, an idea he lobbied for vehemently. County tuberculosis sanatoria—as well as state hospitals for the insane, city homes for elderly, etc.—became common after the turn of the twentieth century. A disease or class of disorders called for a building of a certain architectural style located in a setting usually far from the central population. These criteria were usually dictated by a certain influential personality or voted on at large medical conferences. The creation of Nopeming—the first county TB hospital in Minnesota—was a combination of both. Read Dan Turner’s fascinating history of Nopeming here.

Hand-drawn map of the Nopeming campus from Dan Turner’s collection.