56. The LAWSON GENERAL HOSPITAL

(principal streets only open to visitors; those with business to transact may obtain permission to enter buildings from the adjutant), on Carroll Ave. between Hood Ave. and US 23 (Buford Highway), is situated on a 140-acre reservation adjoining the naval base.

The hospital was named for Thomas Lawson, Surgeon General of the United States Army before the War between the States. Construction, begun on December 19, 1940, was completed the following May at a cost of $3,500,000. About 900,000 cubic yards of dirt were removed in leveling 4 red-clay hills before the building program was completed.

The naval base and hospital are on the Site of Camp Gordon, one of the 35 cantonments established in the United States during the first World War. At this camp, consisting of 1,200 buildings on 3,000 acres of land, it is estimated that 80,000 soldiers were quartered at one time. The two most prominent units to be trained in the cantonment were the 82d Division and the Base Hospital (Emory University Medical) Unit 43. After leaving Camp Gordon in April 1918, the men of each of these units served as a body with the American Expeditionary Forces in France for the duration of the war. The cantonment, established on July 18, 1917, and named for General John B. Gordon of the War between the States, was abandoned officially on December 13, 1919. After the government sold the land, the area was given over to forests and farmland, but the section has continued to be known locally as Camp Gordon.

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